SOME  FAMOUS  SINGERS 
OF  THE  XIXIH  CENTURY 


Francis  Rogers 


SITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


MANUEL   GARCIA 
1775-1832 


WfflPMiMMMMMMMMl^ 


SOME  FAMOUS 
SINGERS  of  the 
19th  CENTURY 


By  FRANCIS  ROGERS 


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THE  H.  W.  GRAY  COMPANY 

2  West  Forty-fifth  Street,  New  York 
Sole  agents  for  NOVELLO  &  CO.,  Ltd. 


Copyright,  1914,  by  The  H.W.  Gray  Co. 
FIRST  PUBLISHED  IN  THE  NEW  MUSIC  REVIEW 


LIBSARV 

■Rtos 
Contents 

The  Two  Manuel  Garcias  ....       i 
4g  Manuel  Garcia  (father) 

qJ,  Manuel  Garcia  (son) 

Maria  and  Pauline  Garcia  ....     15 

Maria  Garcia 
Pauline  Garcia 

Catalani  and  Pasta 31 

Angelica  Catalani 
Giuditta  Negri  Pasta 

Luigi    Lablache 46 

Three  Tenors 55 

Giovanni  Battista  Rubini 
Adolphe  Nourrit 
Gilbert  Duprez 

SONTAG   AND   LlND 73 

Henriette  Sontag 
Jenny  Lind 


i  Grisi,  Mario  and  Tamburini     ...     94 

v  Giulia  Grisi 


Mario  de  Candia 
ft-  Antonio  Tamburini 

Some  Conclusions in 


Z5I)£  X3wo  Mlanuel  (Barcias 


MANUEL  GARCIA    (FATHER),  1775-1832 
MANUEL  GARCIA  (SON),  1805-1906 


HE  name  of  Garcia  is  written  large 
in  the  history  of  song.  From  1808, 
when  the  first  Manuel  Garcia  made 
his  debut  in  Paris,  till  the  death  of 
the  second  Manuel  in  1906,  these  two  men  ex- 
erted directly  a  potent  influence  on  the  art  of 
singing,  the  former  as  singer  and  teacher,  the 
latter  as  teacher.  In  addition,  Maria  Garcia 
(better  known  to  us  under  her  married  name, 
Malibran)  and  Pauline  Viardot-Garcia,  daugh- 
ters of  Manuel,  Senior,  and  sisters  of  Manuel, 
Junior,  had  brilliant  operatic  careers,  and 
Pauline  achieved  also  success  as  a  teacher. 

It  is  of  great  interest  to  us  lovers  of  sing- 
ing to  recall  the  lives  of  these  four  astonishing 
Spaniards,  and  to  see  how  they,  in  especial 
the  father  and  the  son,  transmitted  the  tenets 
and  traditions  of  the  golden  age  of  Italian  bel 
canto  even  down  to  this  very  day  and  hour. 
Indeed,  we  shall  not  be  far  from  the  literal 
truth  if  we  call  Manuel  Garcia,  Senior,  "the 
father  of  modern  singing." 
1 


2      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

Manuel  del  Popolo  Vicente  Rodriguez,  only 
known  to  us  under  his  stage  name  of  Manuel 
Garcia,  was  born  in  Seville  in  1775.  He 
began  his  career  as  a  singer,  at  the  age  of  six, 
as  chorister  in  the  Cathedral,  and  must,  even 
as  a  child,  have  shown  the  remarkable  quali- 
ties of  energy  and  musical  talent  that  distin- 
guished him  in  later  years,  for  by  the  time  he 
was  seventeen  he  was  already  well  known  as 
singer,  actor,  composer  and  conductor,  and  his 
musical  pieces,  mostly  operettas,  were  popu- 
lar all  over  Spain. 

Opportunities  for  musical  study  in  Seville 
must  have  been  extremely  meager  (there  was 
not  one  pianoforte  in  that  city  in  1775),  but 
young  Garcia  took  advantage  of  whatever 
facilities  for  education  he  could  find,  and  in 
1792  made  his  operatic  debut  in  Cadix.  His 
voice,  already  a  tenor  of  good  quality,  prom- 
ised much  better  things  for  the  future,  but  his 
acting  gave  slight  indication  of  his  future  pro- 
ficiency in  this  branch  of  his  art.  His  next 
engagement  was  in  Madrid,  where  he  made  a 
great  hit  in  an  operetta  of  his  own,  "El  Poeta 
Calculista,"  in  the  course  of  which  he  intro- 
duced, with  soul-stirring  effect,  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  his  own  guitar,  a  popular  national 
song  called  "A  Smuggler  am  I." 

For  a  number  of  years  Garcia  contented 
himself  with  the  laurels  to  be  won  in  his  own 
country,    but   his   ambitions   reached    far   be- 


THE   TWO    MANUEL   GARCIAS  3 

yond  the  Pyrenees.  In  the  first  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century  artistic  life  in  Spain  suf- 
fered grievously  by  reason  of  the  French  in- 
vasion, while  Paris  was  the  most  brilliant  and, 
outwardly  at  least,  the  most  prosperous  capi- 
tal in  Europe.  In  1808  Garcia  signed  an  en- 
gagement to  sing  at  the  Theatre  Italien  in 
Paris.  The  fact  that  he  had  never  sung  in 
Italian  did  not  daunt  him,  and  in  February  of 
that  year  he  made  his  entree  in  the  now- 
forgotten  opera  of  "Griselda,"  by  Paer.  His 
success  was  immediate.  His  vivacity  and  fire 
carried  all  before  them,  distracting  attention 
from  his  weaknesses  as  actor  and  musician  and 
the  inequalities  of  his  voice.  His  inborn  ani- 
mation was  infectious  and  aroused  everybody 
within  reach  of  his  dynamic  personality. 
Garat,  a  famous  old  French  singer,  spoke  for 
all  Paris  when  he  said,  "I  love  the  Andalusian 
frenzy  of  the  man.  He  puts  life  into  every- 
thing about  him." 

He  stayed  two  years  in  Paris  and  then  went 
to  Italy,  where,  after  successful  appearances 
in  Turin  and  Rome,  he  settled  in  Naples. 
Murat,  then  in  supreme  power,  made  him  lead- 
ing tenor  in  the  choir  of  his  private  chapel,  a 
position  of  some  importance.  Garcia  now,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  had  the  chance  to 
acquire  a  sound  musical  training,  and  went 
zealously  to  work  to  overcome  the  defects  in 
his  early  education.    He  also  took  up  the  study 


4      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

of  voice  emission  under  Anzani,  a  distin- 
guished tenor,  who  was  an  able  exponent  of 
the  old  Italian  school  of  singing,  and  may 
possibly  have  been  a  pupil  in  his  early  youth 
of  the  greatest  of  all  teachers,  Niccolo  Porpora 
(1686-1766).  By  great  good  fortune,  young 
Rossini  was  in  Naples  at  the  same  time  and 
was  quick  to  recognize  in  Garcia  the  qualities 
he  needed  for  the  proper  interpretation  of  his 
music.  He  wrote  at  once  a  part  for  him  in  his 
opera  "Elisabetta,"  and  a  little  later  the  part 
of  Almaviva  in  "II  Barbiere  di  Siviglia." 
Garcia's  star  rose  together  with  Rossini's; 
Rossini  was  the  new  deity  among  operatic 
composers,  and  Garcia  was  his  prophet. 

An  anecdote  characteristic  of  Garcia's  self- 
assurance,  not  to  say  spirit  of  bravado,  is  told 
in  connection  with  his  arrival  in  Naples.  At 
his  first  rehearsal  there  with  orchestra,  in 
order  to  make  an  instant  and  vivid  impression 
on  the  musicians,  he  began  his  opening  air  a 
half-tone  higher  than  they  were  playing  the 
accompaniment  and  held  his  pitch,  without 
deviation,  through  to  the  end.  The  or- 
chestra thought  at  first  that  he  had  made 
a  bad  entrance,  but  when  they  discovered  that 
he  had  performed  successfully  a  difficult  feat 
of  musicianship  they  gave  him  a  hearty  round 
of  applause. 

In  1816  Garcia  returned  to  Paris  as  first 
tenor  in  the  troupe  of  Catalani,  one  of  the 


THE   TWO    MANUEL    GARCIAS  5 

most  brilliant  of  prima  donnas.  The  Parisians 
remarked  at  once  the  great  progress  he  had 
made  as  actor  and  singer  since  they  had  last 
heard  him,  and  straightway  rated  him  as  the 
first  tenor  of  the  day.  With  consistent  suc- 
cess he  sang  in  all  the  operas  of  the  current 
repertory,  in  Mozart  and  Rossini,  as  well  as 
in  operas  that  survive  now  as  names  only; 
but  Catalani,  who  was  never  disposed  to  share 
her  triumphs  with  other  singers,  made  his  po- 
sition so  intolerable  that  he  finally  broke  his 
contract  and  went  to  London. 

In  London  he  sang  in  "II  Barbiere"  and 
other  operas  with  Fodor,  an  excellent  French 
soprano,  and  was  most  cordially  received;  but 
he  soon  returned  to  Paris,  where,  in  1819,  he 
created  a  furore  by  his  production  of 
Rossini's  charming  masterpiece.  He  spent  the 
greater  part  of  the  next  five  years  in  Paris, 
singing,  and  establishing  a  school  for  singing 
which  achieved  immediate  popularity.  In 
1823  he  returned  to  London  for  the  opera 
season,  and  accepted  pupils  there  as  he  had 
done  in  Paris. 

The  period  between  1820  and  1825  marks 
the  very  zenith  of  Garcia's  career.  In  both 
Paris  and  London  he  was  held  in  the  highest 
honor  both  as  artist  and  teacher.  In  four 
roles  he  was  considered  to  be  without  a 
rival — Almaviva,  Tancredi,  Otello  (Ros- 
sini)    and    Don    Giovanni.      Don    Giovanni, 


6      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

though  written  for  a  baritone  voice,  was  one 
of  his  greatest  impersonations,  although  it  is 
hard  to  understand  how  a  tenor  voice  could 
possibly  encompass  music  of  such  low 
tessitura.  In  1825,  the  fiftieth  year  of  his  life, 
the  season  in  London,  in  the  course  of  which 
he  produced  and  sang  in  two  of  his  own  operas, 
brought  him  the  very  large  salary  (for  those 
days)  of  £1,250. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  he  was 
able  to  realize  a  project  that  had  long  been 
in  his  mind.  Some  time  in  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember he  set  sail  for  New  York  with  a  com- 
pany of  singers  which  included  his  wife,  his 
son,  his  daughter  Maria  and  four  other  sing- 
ers of  no  great  celebrity.  His  coming  was  an 
epoch-making  event  in  the  musical  history  of 
our  country,  for  although  performances  of 
light  opera  in  English  were  more  or  less  popu- 
lar, and  New  Orleans  had  for  a  number  of 
years  supported  a  fairly  good  French  light 
opera  company,  the  real  beginning  of  opera 
in  the  United  States  was  made  by  Garcia  and 
his  troupe.  An  anonymous  newspaper  writer 
of  the  day  hailed  Garcia  as  "Our  musical 
Columbus" ! 

According  to  European  standards,  the  little 
band  of  singers  was  not  a  remarkable  one — 
except  for  Garcia  himself  and  his  daughter, 
there  were  no  great  artists  among  them — but 
it  was  quite  strong  enough  to  impress  favor- 


THE   TWO    MANUEL   GARCIAS  7 

ably  the  thoroughly   inexperienced  public  of 
provincial  New  York. 

The  season  opened  November  29,  1825,  at 
the    Park    Theatre,*    with    "II    Barbiere    di 
Siviglia."      To    make    the   performance    even 
possible  required  a  manager  and  a  musician 
of  extraordinary  qualities.     Both  the  chorus 
and  the  orchestra  had  to  be  selected  from  local 
musicians,   who   knew   nothing   about    Italian 
opera  or  the  Italian  language,  and  drilled  to  at 
least   a    decent    degree    of    proficiency.      But 
Garcia  was  equal  to  the  task  and  carried  the 
memorable  evening  through  without  notable 
mishap  and  to  the  manifest  pleasure  of  the 
public.     The  elite  of  New  York  was  there, 
including  James  Fenimore  Cooper  and  Fitz- 
Greene  Halleck,  the  author  of  "Marco  Boz- 
zaris" ;  also  Joseph  Bonaparte,  the  ex-King  of 
Spain.    The  first  performance  of  real  opera  in 
New  York  was  voted  a  great  success. 

During  the  next  ten  months  seventy-nine 
performances  of  a  dozen  operas  were  given 
before  responsive  and  encouragingly  large  au- 
diences. That  the  public  was  considerably 
puzzled  by  some  of  the  incongruities  and  ab- 
surdities of  Italian  opera  is  proved  by  the 
newspaper  comments  of  the  day;  but,  on  the 
whole,  it  was  open-minded  and  quite  ready  to 
follow,  more  or  less  blindly,  the  musical  taste 

*The  Park  Theatre  stood  in  Park  Row,  opposite 
the  site  of  the  present  Post-Office. 


8      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  Europe  until  it  could  develop  some  intelli- 
gent taste  of  its  own.  Garcia  must  have 
thought  our  ancestors  for  the  most  part  a 
horde  of  benighted  barbarians,  so  far  as  music 
was  concerned;  but  he  found  a  few  Ameri- 
cans who  had  traveled  and  imbibed  a  love  of 
art  in  Europe,  and,  in  addition,  a  fair-sized 
colony  of  Europeans  who  could  discriminate 
between  good  and  bad  in  music.  Of  these 
latter  the  most  noteworthy  was  old  Lorenzo 
da  Ponte,  an  Italian  poet,  who  many  years  be- 
fore had  written  the  librettos  for  Mozart's 
"Cosi  fan  tutti,"  "Le  Nozze  di  Figaro"  and 
"Don  Giovanni."  He  and  Garcia  had  never 
met  in  Europe,  but  at  their  first  meeting  in 
New  York  they  embraced  enthusiastically  and 
danced  about  the  room,  singing  at  the  top  of 
their  lungs  the  "champagne  song"  from  "Don 
Giovanni." 

The  total  receipts  of  the  season  were  about 
$56,000 — a  goodly  sum  for  those  days — and 
Garcia  was  tempted  to  prolong  his  stay  in  New 
York,  but  he  finally  abandoned  the  idea,  and 
in  the  fall  of  1826  left  for  Mexico.  He  took 
all  his  troupe  with  him,  except  his  daughter, 
who  had  married  a  French  merchant  named 
Malibran,  whose  business  was  in  New  York. 

The  journey  from  New  York  to  Mexico 
City  ninety  years  ago  was  a  long  and  diffi- 
cult one,  but  Garcia  accomplished  it  in  the 
course  of  a  few  weeks  and  arrived  in  the  capi- 


THE    TWO    MANUEL    GARCIAS  9 

tal  ready,  as  he  supposed,  for  business.  But, 
on  overhauling  his  luggage,  he  found  that 
somehow  and  somewhere  all  his  music  had 
been  lost.  The  first  performance  was  near  at 
hand  and  there  was  no  source  from  which  he 
could  replace  the  missing  scores.  Most  im- 
presarios would  have  sat  down  and  torn  their 
hair,  but  Garcia  was  made  of  different  stuff — 
he  sat  down  and  did  not  rise  till  he  had  him- 
self written  out  from  memory  all  the  neces- 
sary parts  for  the  first  opera,  "Don  Giovanni." 
Later  he  repeated  the  feat  with  other  operas, 
besides  writing  and  producing  several  operas 
of  his  own  and  translating  all  the  Italian  texts 
into  Spanish.  I  doubt  if  even  Toscanini  could 
do  this  and,  in  addition,  sing  leading  tenor 
roles ! 

Despite  the  raging  of  a  political  tempest 
among  the  Mexicans,  the  season  was  a  re- 
munerative one,  and  at  its  close  Garcia  and 
his  colleagues  left  for  Vera  Cruz,  where  they 
were  to  embark  for  Europe,  laden  with  the 
financial  reward  for  their  hard  work,  but  they 
had  not  gone  far  when  they  were  intercepted 
by  brigands  and  despoiled  of  everything  of 
value,  amounting  to  some  $30,000. 

Garcia  finally  reached  Paris  and  resumed 
his  career,  but  his  voice  was  no  longer  trust- 
worthy, and  after  a  few  performances  of  some 
of  his  most  famous  parts  he  gave  up  the  stage 
altogether  and  devoted  himself  to  teaching. 
He  died  in  Paris  in  1832. 


IO      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Garcia  was  not  a  lovable  man.  His  auto- 
cratic will  and  his  fiery,  domineering  temper 
won  for  him  respect,  but  not  affection.  Even 
his  children  he  ruled  by  fear  rather  than  love, 
and  many  are  the  tales  of  his  relentless  treat- 
ment of  them  and  of  those  that  came  in  close 
contact  with  him.  One  legend  has  it  that  the 
passers-by  often  would  hear  the  sound  of 
weeping  issuing  from  Garcia's  house.  If  they 
inquired  the  cause,  the  neighbors  would  tell 
them,  "Oh,  that's  nothing.  It's  only  Mr. 
Garcia  teaching  his  pupils  how  to  sing." 

No  singer  ever  had  so  full  a  life  as  he,  or 
possessed  such  a  combination  of  talent,  energy, 
resource  and  will.  He  was  a  brilliant  rather 
than  a  moving  singer,  and,  at  a  time  when 
ornamentation  in  singing  was  highly  esteemed, 
excelled  all  other  singers  in  the  ease  and  se- 
curity with  which  he  invented  and  executed 
the  most  difficult  ornaments.  As  a  New  York 
critic  put  it:  "He  is  not  at  home  in  the  simple 
melodies  of  Mozart.  He  must  have  a  wide 
field  for  display;  he  must  have  ample  room 
to  verge  enough  for  unlimited  curvetings  and 
flourishes." 

His  musicianship  was  extraordinarily  fine 
for  a  singer.  In  the  course  of  his  career,  he 
wrote  some  forty  operas,  none  of  which  sur- 
vived his  own  day,  but  which  amply  attest  his 
musical  facility  and  technical  skill  in  compo- 
sition. 


Copyright  1905,  Photographisehe  Gesellschaft 
By  permission  of  the  Berlin  Photographic  Co.,  New  York. 

MANUEL  GARCIA  (SON) 

1805-1906 
From    tin:   Sargent   Portrait 


THE   TWO    MANUEL    GARCIAS  II 

His  singing  and  sound  musicianship  were 
greatly  reinforced  by  his  unusual  skill  as  an 
actor.  His  vivacity  and  dash  in  comedy  and 
his  fire  and  intensity  in  tragedy  were  irre- 
sistible. With  such  a  multiplicity  of  gifts,  it 
is  not  surprising  that  he  should  have  been  con- 
sidered the  finest  tenor  of  his  time.  The  male 
soprano  had  been  the  predominant  operatic 
figure  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  when 
Rossini  was  writing  his  early  operas  he  found 
about  him  a  number  of  excellent  tenors,  for 
whom  he  wrote  his  leading  parts,  and  this 
combination  of  circumstances  resulted  in  a 
change  of  public  taste  and  the  speedy  and  com- 
plete obliteration  from  the  operatic  stage  of 
the  male  soprano.  Garcia,  by  right  of  his 
artistic  qualities,  was  the  first  of  the  line  of 
great  tenors  whose  sway  has  endured  undis- 
puted to  the  present  day. 

Manuel  Garcia,  the  younger,  was  born  in 
Zafra,  Catalonia,  in  1805,  and  died  in'London 
in  1906.  As  his  long  life  covered  practically 
the  entire  nineteenth  .century,  and  as  he  was 
intimately  connected  with  singing  in  all  its 
branches  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  his 
century-long  career  is  an  interesting  one, 
though  in  no  way  spectacular. 

From  the  very  first  his  father  was  deter- 
mined to  make  a  singer  of  him,  and  gave  him 
indefatigably  the  benefit  of  his  own  great 
artistry  and  experience.     The  boy  was  with 


12      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

his  father  constantly  during  the  first  twenty 
years  of  his  life,  and  if  anything  could  have 
made  a  great  singer  of  him,  this  association 
certainly  would  have  done  so ;  but  Nature  had 
given  him  neither  a  remarkable  voice  nor  an 
aptitude  for  the  stage,  although  hcwas  an  ex- 
cellent musician  by  instinct,  as  well  as  by 
training.  His  bent  was  decidedly  for  the 
tranquil  life  of  the  teacher  and  for  scientific 
research. 

He  accompanied  his  father  to  New  York, 
and  sang  constantly  during  that  long  and 
arduous  season.  His  voice  was  a  rather  high 
baritone,  but,  in  addition  to  his  own  roles,  he 
would  often  have  to  sing  such  heavy  parts  as 
Leporello  in  "Don  Giovanni,"  and  also  to  sub- 
stitute for  his  father,  a  tenor,  in  time  of  need. 
But  his  distaste  for  the  career  was  deep- 
seated,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  after 
his  return  to  Europe,  he  abandoned  it  alto- 
gether, much  to  the  elder  Garcia's  disgust,  in 
order  to  devote  himself  to  the  work  he  so 
heartily  loved  and  for  which  he  was  so  well 
qualified. 

In  1829  he  received  an  appointment  to  teach 
singing  in  the  Paris  Conservatory.  During 
the  ensuing  years  he  made  a  profound  scien- 
tific study  of  everything  that  pertains  to  the 
emission  of  the  human  voice,  the  results  of 
which  he  published  in  several  authoritative 
treatises.    In  1848  he  moved  to  London,  which 


THE   TWO    MANUEL   GARCIAS  1 3 

he  made  his  home  during  the  remaining  fifty- 
eight  years  of  his  life. 

In  1854  he  gave  to  the  world  his  invention, 
the  laryngoscope,  which  has  thrown  much 
light  on  the  vocal  processes  and  has  been  of  in- 
estimable value  in  medical  practice.  At  first 
it  was  thought  that  the  laryngoscope  would 
have  a  beneficial  effect  on  the  art  of  singing, 
but  even  Garcia  himself  soon  discovered  that 
it  was  useful  to  him  only  in  confirming  the  ac- 
curacy of  certain  theories  that  he,  in  common 
with  many  other  good  teachers  before  him, 
had  long  held  to  be  true.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  discovery  of  the  laryngoscope  has  probably 
been  a  detriment  to  the  art  of  singing,  because 
it  was  the  origin  of  the  school  of  teaching  that 
believes,  erroneously,  that  the  human  voice  is, 
after  all,  only  a  piece  of  ingenious  mechanism, 
susceptible  of  development  and  control  by 
purely  physiological  methods. 

Garcia  was  unquestionably  the  greatest 
teacher  of  the  nineteenth  century.  His  sister, 
Pauline  Viardot-Garcia,  Jenny  Lind,  Johanna 
Wagner  (a  niece  of  Richard),  Mathilde 
Marchesi,  Stockhausen,  Santley,  Marie  Tem- 
pest and  a  host  of  others  scarcely  less  re- 
nowned were  proud  to  call  him  master.  As 
he  grew  older  and  taught  less  assiduously,  his 
famous  pupils,  Marchesi  and  Stockhausen, 
were  training  according  to  his  methods  many 
of  the  singers  who,  like  Melba  and  Eames  and 


14      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Van  Rooy,  are  great  figures  in  the  world 
of  song  to-day. 

On  his  hundredth  birthday  the  sovereigns 
of  Spain,  England  and  Germany  sent  deco- 
rations and  encomiastic  messages  to  him,  and 
his  admirers  in  London,  including  many  peo- 
ple great  in  the  medical  and  the  musical 
worlds,  gave  him  a  banquet  and  presented  him 
with  a  portrait  of  himself  painted  by  Sargent. 
A  year  later  he  died. 

Garcia's  services  to  the  art  of  singing  were 
inestimable.  Inheriting  from  his  father  the 
methods  and  principles  of  the  old  Italian 
school  of  bel  canto,  he  was  able  to  add  to  them 
the  fruits  of  his  own  astonishingly  long  expe- 
rience, and  to  pass  them  on  by  word  of  mouth 
to  the  students  of  the  beginning  of  the  twen- 
tieth century. 


3ttaria  an6  Jpauline  (Barcia 


MARIA  (MME.  MALIBRAN),  1808-1836 
PAULINE  (MME.  VIARDOT),  1821-1910 


|| 


HAVE  called  Manuel  Garcia, 
Senior,  "the  father  of  modern 
singing ;"  he  was  also  the  progenitor 
of  two  daughters,  Maria  and  Paul- 
ine, who  had  operatic  careers  of  exceptional 
brilliancy  and  wrote  their  names  indelibly  in 
the  Golden  Book  of  Singers.  From  their 
father  they  inherited  musical  and  dramatic  in- 
stincts of  the  highest  order;  from  him,  too, 
they  derived  a  comprehensive  and  sound 
musical  education,  as  well  as  love  and  rever- 
ence for  their  art.  All  these  they  possessed  in 
common,  but  disparity  in  age,  temperament  and 
conditions  of  life  led  them  into  dissimilar 
paths  and  accounts  for  the  unlike  memories 
they  left  behind  them. 

Maria  was  born  in  Paris  in  1808,  a  few 
weeks  after  her  father's  arrival  from  Spain. 
Three  years  later  he  took  her  with  him  to 
Naples,  and  when  she  was  only  five  years 
old  gave  her  a  child's  part  to  play  in  Paer's 
15 


l6      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

"Agnese."  In  this  case  the  child  was  certainly 
mother  to  the  woman,  for  one  night,  during 
a  performance,  the  little  creature  began  of  her 
own  accord  to  sing  a  third  part  to  a  duet,  much 
to  the  surprise  and  delight  of  the  audience.  As 
a  mere  infant,  she  spoke  French,  Spanish  and 
Italian  with  complete  ease,  and  a  few  years 
later  became  equally  mistress  of  English  and 
German.  (Although  purely  of  Spanish  blood, 
she  always  considered  herself  a  French 
woman.)  Garcia  had  her  taught  the  piano 
and  musical  theory  under  the  best  masters, 
and  by  the  time  she  was  eleven  she  could  play 
to  him  all  the  piano  music  of  Bach,  for  which 
he  had  a  strong  liking. 

With  all  her  extraordinary  aptitude  for 
learning  and  a  loving  and  lovable  nature,  she 
was  hot-tempered,  impatient  of  discipline  and 
indolent.  Her  father,  with  characteristic  zeal 
and  persistence,  undertook  to  overcome  these 
weaknesses  in  her  make-up,  in  order  to  bring 
her  great  talents  to  their  fullest  possible  de- 
velopment. To  subdue  and  educate  so  strong- 
willed  a  child  was  an  arduous  task  and  produc- 
tive of  much  suffering  for  the  child,  but 
Garcia's  will  was  indomitable,  and  in  later 
years  Maria  admitted  freely  that  without  her 
father's  stern  discipline  she  never  could  have 
become  famous. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  she  began  her  vocal 
studies    under   her    father,    an    incomparable 


MARIA  FELICITA  MALIBRAN 
1808-1836 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE   GARCIA  1/ 

master.  There  was  much  to  do,  because  her 
ear  had  never  been  accurate  and  her  voice  was 
in  some  ways  defective,  but  a  year  later,  in 
1824,  Garcia  felt  that  she  was  ready  for  a 
public  hearing.  Her  first  appearance  before 
an  audience  was  at  a  concert  given  in  Paris 
by  a  musical  club  under  the  direction  of  the 
lion  of  the  hour,  Garcia's  friend,  Rossini.  She 
did  credit  to  her  father's  teaching  and  was 
received  cordially,  but  made  no  profound  im- 
pression on  her  hearers. 

A  few  months  later  she  was  with  her  father 
in  London.  Owing  to  the  sickness  of  an  im- 
portant singer  at  the  opera,  it  was  necessary 
to  find  at  short  notice  a  substitute  to  sing  the 
part  of  Rosina  in  "II  Barbiere  di  Siviglia." 
This  was  Maria's  opportunity  and  she  seized  it. 
June  7, 1825, she  made  her  operatic  debut.  Her 
success  was  immediate  and  decidedly  encour- 
aging. Her  youthful  charm,  fresh  voice  and 
easy,  spontaneous  action  were  most  winning, 
although  there  were,  of  course,  imperfections 
in  her  performance.  On  the  strength  of  this 
debut  she  was  straightway  engaged  for  the  re- 
maining six  weeks  of  the  season  for  the  goodly 
sum  of  £500.  Although  she  was  associated 
with  some  of  the  best  singers  of  the  day,  in- 
cluding Velluti,  the  last  of  the  great  male 
sopranos  to  visit  London,  she  won  the  approval 
of  the  public  and  began  to  show  signs  of  the 
marvelous  magnetism  which,  only  two  or  three 


1 8      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

years  later,  laid  musical  Europe  prostrate  at 
her  feet. 

A  characteristic  tale  is  told  of  her  first  per- 
formance with  Velluti.  He,  being  a  singer  of 
the  old  school,  was  accustomed  to  embellish 
his  melodies  with  such  cadenzas  and  flourishes 
as  seemed  good  to  him,  but  in  rehearsal  he 
contented  himself  with  humming  through  his 
part  without  ornament.  Consequently,  Maria 
had  no  idea  what  embellishments  he  planned  to 
use.  At  the  performance,  in  the  course  of  a 
duet  with  her,  he  introduced  a  set  of  brilliant 
vocal  pyrotechnics  much  to  the  liking  of  his 
hearers.  What  were  their  delighted  amaze- 
ment and  his  disgust  when,  a  moment  later, 
Maria  reproduced  every  flourish  and  ornament 
he  had  employed,  throwing  in  at  the  end,  for 
good  measure,  some  dazzling  skyrockets  of  her 
own  invention! 

In  the  fall  of  1825  she  accompanied  her 
father  to  New  York  as  leading  prima  donna  of 
his  opera  troupe.  She  was  very  young  and 
almost  without  experience,  but  it  was  she, 
rather  than  he,  that  carried  the  musical  burden 
of  America's  first  season  of  grand  opera. 
Garcia  himself,  having  passed  his  prime,  could 
no  longer  count  on  good  service  from  his  voice, 
and,  as  the  other  members  of  the  company 
had  but  slight  artistic  merit,  Maria's  load  was 
a  heavy  one. 

New  York  had  never  seen  a  performance  of 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE   GARCIA  19 

grand  opera  in  the  European  style,  but,  de- 
spite its  inexperience,  it  was  prompt  to  grasp 
the  fact  that  the  young  prima  donna  was  a 
remarkable  and  fascinating  artist.  The  morn- 
ing after  the  first  performance  the  Evening 
Post  said:  "Her  voice  is  what  is  denominated 
in  the  Italian  a  fine  contra-alto,  and  her  science 
and  skill  in  its  management  are  such  as  to 
enable  her  to  run  over  every  tone  and  semi- 
tone of  three  octaves  with  an  ease  and  grace 
that  cost  apparently  no  effort.  Her  person  is 
about  the  middle  height,  slightly  embonpoint; 
her  eyes  dark,  arch  and  expressive,  and  a  play- 
ful smile  is  almost  constantly  the  companion 
of  her  lips.  She  was  the  magnet  who  attracted 
all  eyes  and  won  all  hearts,  ...  a  cunning 
pattern  of  designing  nature,  equally  surprising 
us  by  the  melody  and  tones  of  her  voice  and 
by  the  propriety  and  grace  of  her  acting." 

Her  popularity  increased  as  the  season  went 
on.  Garcia  realized  her  value  as  a  drawing 
card  and  gave  her  every  opportunity  to  display 
her  qualities.  He  even  wrote  an  operetta  for 
her,  in  which  she  had  so  much  singing  to  do 
that  after  the  first  two  performances  she 
fainted  away  from  fatigue.  This  drew  from 
one  of  the  newspapers  a  protest  to  the  man- 
agement for  subjecting  a  girl  of  such  tender 
years  to  so  great  a  strain. 

While  Maria  was  thus  basking  in  the  sun  of 
public  approbation,  her  life  behind  the  scenes 


20      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

was  full  of  hard  work  and  tempest.  With  in- 
creasing years  Garcia  had  become  more  frac- 
tious and  exacting  than  ever  and  was  con- 
stantly quarreling  with  his  high-spirited 
daughter.  "Cannot"  was  a  word  never  per- 
mitted in  his  household ;  what  he  said  must 
be  done  must  be  done,  no  matter  how  diffi- 
cult. On  one  occasion  he  told  Maria  to  pre- 
pare a  new  role  within  a  very  few  days.  When 
she  remonstrated  that  the  time  was  too  short, 
he  replied  that  if  she  did  not  learn  it  he  would 
kill  her.  She  learned  it!  Again,  after  a  hot 
dispute  behind  the  scenes,  they  were  playing 
the  last  act  of  "Otello."  Suddenly  Maria 
noticed  that  the  dagger  in  her  father's  hands 
was  a  real  one  and  that  there  was  a  murderous 
look  in  his  eye.  Thoroughly  frightened,  she 
fell  on  her  knees  before  him,  pleading  hoarsely 
in  Spanish,  "For  God's  sake,  father,  don't  kill 
me!"  But  murder  was  not  in  Garcia's  mind, 
and  the  dagger  was  only  a  hasty  substitution 
for  a  mislaid  property  weapon. 

In  March,  1826,  Maria  married  a  man  of 
French  birth  named  Malibran,  a  naturalized 
American  doing  business  in  New  York.  He 
was  well  on  in  middle  age,  but  reputed  wealthy. 
How  the  marriage  came  about  is  not  known. 
Perhaps  Garcia  forced  it  through  because  of 
Malibran's  apparent  wealth ;  or,  perhaps, 
Maria  thought  it  the  easiest  way  to  free  her- 
self from  an  irksome  paternal  tyranny.     The 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE   GARCIA  21 

marriage  was  a  complete  failure,  for  her  hus- 
band soon  showed  himself  to  be  an  unprinci- 
pled rascal  without  either  money  or  honor. 
When  Garcia  and  his  troupe  left  for  Mexico 
in  the  fall  of  1826,  Madame  Malibran  stayed 
behind  in  New  York,  very  likely  with  the 
idea  that  she  could  help  her  husband  to 
straighten  out  his  tangled  affairs.  Occasion- 
ally she  sang  solos  in  Grace  Church  and  also 
took  part  in  some  performances  of  English 
operettas  at  the  Bowery  Theatre,  but  after  a 
long  winter  of  domestic  disillusion  and  futile 
efforts  to  arrange  an  endurable  life  with  her 
husband,  she  decided  to  leave  him  finally  and 
to  return  to  Europe.  In  the  autumn  of  1827 
she  arrived  in  Paris. 

Her  life  during  the  nine  years  remaining  to 
her  was  an  unbroken  series  of  artistic  triumphs 
in  Italy,  France  and  England — she  never  sang 
in  Germany.  Her  year  in  America  had  trans- 
formed her  from  a  promising  debuttante  into 
a  full-fledged  artist.  Her  voice  had  become 
an  organ  of  sympathetic  timbre  and  extensive 
range,  contralto  in  quality,  but  reaching  up- 
wards easily  into  the  soprano  tessitura.  The 
middle  part  of  it  was  inferior  in  quality  to 
the  lower  and  the  upper,  but  Garcia's  excel- 
lent schooling  and  Malibran's  own  instinct  and 
skill  enabled  her  to  minimize  its  weaknesses 
and  emphasize  its  beauties. 

In  person  she  was  rather  small,  but  well- 


22      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

proportioned ;  charming,  rather  than  beautiful. 
On  the  stage  she  was  always  most  becomingly 
dressed,  quite  unlike  the  typical  dowdy  Italian 
prima  donna  of  those  days. 

As  an  actress  she  carried  everything  before 
her.  When  we  read  in  cold  blood  about  her 
histrionic  methods  it  seems  as  if  they  must 
have  been  extravagant  and  often  bordering  on 
bad  taste,  but  such  was  not  the  verdict  of  her 
contemporaries,  who  found  her  acting  both 
sincere  and  powerful.  Behind  every  note  she 
sang  and  every  gesture  she  made  were  an  au- 
dacity, a  fire  and  a  passion  that  stirred  the 
emotions  of  her  hearers  to  their  very  depths. 
She  was  frankly  hungry  for  applause  and 
would  sometimes  even  stoop  to  meretricious 
means  in  order  to  win  it.  Like  her  father,  she 
never  doubted  her  ability  to  meet  any  emer- 
gency, and  her  astounding  versatility  enabled 
her  to  accomplish  many  seemingly  impossible 
tours  de  force.  Only  two  failures  are  charged 
to  her  account — one  the  impersonation  of  the 
Moor  himself  in  Rossini's  "Otello" ;  the  other 
an  attempt  to  dance  a  mazurka  on  the  stage. 
In  her  brief  career  she  took  part  in  thirty-five 
operas,  in  some  of  which  she  was  able  to  sing 
more  than  one  role.  Her  mind  was  so  ac- 
quisitive that  she  could  master  a  role  in  a  few 
hours,  and  her  restless  temperament  was  al- 
ways urging  her  to  add  to  her  repertory. 

In  private  life  she  was  as  bewitching  as 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE    GARCIA  23 

she  was  in  public.  Everybody  she  met  fell 
instant  captive  to  the  charm  of  her  warm,  im- 
pulsive, generous  qualities.  It  is  fatiguing 
merely  to  read  the  story  of  this  amazing 
woman's  activities.  She  was  never  still;  she 
never  rested.  Her  days  were  so  full  that  one 
wonders  how  she  could  have  lived  through 
even  one  of  them — up  at  dawn  for  a  long 
gallop  on  horseback,  rehearsals  and  social  in- 
tercourse all  day  long,  the  opera  at  night,  fol- 
lowed by  suppers  and  dancing — the  sturdy 
flame  that  burned  so  strong  in  all  the  Garcias 
and  that  brought  her  brother  and  her  sister  to 
extreme  old  age,  Malibran  seemed  determined 
to  consume  in  herself  within  a  few  years. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  follow  her  in  her 
many  tours — to-day  in  Paris,  to-morrow  in 
London,  then  back  to  Paris  by  way  of  Brus- 
sels; a  month  later  a  triumphal  progress 
through  enraptured  Italy;  then  England 
again. 

In  January,  1828,  she  made  her  Parisian 
rentree  in  "Semiramide"  and  finished  the  sea- 
son there  with  ever-increasing  success.  When 
her  father  returned  from  America  she  joined 
forces  with  him  for  a  few  performances  of  his 
favorite  operas.  His  star  was  setting,  but  for 
a  little  while  it  shone  as  brightly  as  ever  it 
had.  The  night  he  sang  Otello  it  seemed  that 
all  his  youthful  fire  had  come  back  to  him. 
No  one  was  more  delighted  at  this  than  his 


24      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

daughter.  At  the  fall  of  the  curtain  on  one 
great  scene,  Desdemona  lay  pale  and  weeping 
on  the  stage  at  the  feet  of  the  raging  Moor. 
When,  in  response  to  hearty  applause,  the  cur- 
tain rose  a  moment  later  she  was  seen  standing 
beside  him,  hand  in  hand,  her  face  almost  as 
black  as  his.  In  the  brief  preceding  instant 
the  happy  girl  had  thrown  herself  into  her 
father's  arms  and  kissed  his  sooty  face ! 

In  1829  she  and  the  great  German  soprano, 
Sontag,  had  all  London  at  their  feet.  The 
following  year  she  met  Charles  de  Beriot,  a 
Belgian  violinist  of  note,  with  whom  she 
formed  a  happy  and  enduring  liaison,  and  who 
became  the  father  of  her  two  children.  With 
him  she  made  a  home  for  herself  in  Brussels, 
to  which  she  always  returned  in  her  brief  and 
infrequent  holidays.  In  1832,  at  a  few  hours' 
notice,  she  started  for  Italy  with  her  friend, 
the  mighty  Lablache,  and  made  a  brilliant  tour 
through  the  principal  Italian  cities.  The  story 
was  always  the  same.  Wherever  she  appeared 
her  audiences  were  limited  only  by  the  size  of 
the  auditorium.  Her  fees  increased  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  In  1835  she  received  from  the 
London  opera  £2775  for  twenty-four  perform- 
ances— not  bad  pay  even  for  1914! 

In  1836  she  succeeded  in  obtaining  from  the 
French  courts  an  annulment  of  her  marriage. 
This  was  brought  about  largely  through  the  in- 
fluence   of    our    old    Revolutionary    friend, 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE   GARCIA  25 

Lafayette,  now  a  very  old  man.  He,  like  the 
rest  of  the  world,  was  the  devoted  slave  of  the 
young  prima  donna,  and  used  to  say  laugh- 
ingly that  she  was  both  the  latest  and  the  last 
sweetheart  of  his  long  life.  As  soon  as  Mali- 
bran  was  free  she  married  de  Beriot. 

In  April,  1836,  she  was  riding  in  the  park 
in  London  and  had  a  bad  fall  from  her  horse. 
She  made  light  of  her  injuries,  which  in  re- 
ality were  serious,  and  insisted  on  singing  the 
same  night.  If  she  had  taken  reasonable  care 
of  herself  it  is  likely  that  she  would  have  re- 
covered completely  from  the  accident,  but  she 
had  never  known  how  to  spare  herself  and, 
although  in  constant  pain,  continued  her  stren- 
uous life  without  abatement.  In  the  autumn 
she  was  engaged  to  sing  at  a  great  festival  in 
Manchester,  England.  Although  in  no  con- 
dition to  appear  at  all,  she  insisted  on  singing 
not  only  what  was  on  the  programme,  but  also 
all  the  encores  that  the  greedy  public  demanded 
of  her.  On  the  third  day  she  collapsed  com- 
pletely and  was  carried  from  the  stage  to  her 
hotel  in  a  dying  condition.  A  few  days  later, 
September  23,  1836,  she  died  in  the  twenty- 
ninth  year  of  her  age.  She  was  buried  in  Man- 
chester for  a  time  and  then  taken  to  her  final 
resting-place  in  the  cemetery  of  Laeken  in 
Brussels. 

There  was  something  so  feverish,  so  meteoric 
about  Malibran's  career  that  it  is  hard  to  esti- 


26      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

mate  her  real  merit  as  an  artist.  She  flashed 
across  the  heavens,  dazzling  all  beholders  and 
leaving  them  powerless  to  indicate  coherently 
the  path  she  followed.  Her  personal  mag- 
netism was  so  powerful  that  it  rendered  dis- 
passionate criticism  of  her  art  all  but  impos- 
sible. Musically,  she  had  some  creative  power, 
as  her  improvisations  and  published  songs  at- 
tested, but  dramatically,  despite  her  indisput- 
able histrionic  gifts,  she  created  nothing.  She 
left  behind  her  no  worthy  followers;  her  ar- 
tistic influence  ended  with  her  brief  life.  And 
yet  so  shrewd  and  competent  a  critic  as  Ros- 
sini said:  "I  have  met  in  my  life  only  three 
singers  of  real  genius — Lablache,  Rubini,  and 
that  spoiled  child  of  nature,  Malibran." 

To  turn  from  the  study  of  Maria  Garcia's 
career  to  that  of  her  sister  is  like  listening  to 
a  symphony  by  Beethoven  after  "Tristan  and 
Isolde,"  or  reading  Wordsworth  after  Shelley. 

Pauline  Garcia  was  born  in  Paris  in  1821 
and  came  to  America  with  her  parents  four 
years  later.  All  her  long  life  she  retained  a 
vivid  memory  of  her  father  in  the  hands  of 
the  Mexican  brigands,  who,  after  robbing  him 
of  his  all,  compelled  him,  at  the  point  of  the 
knife,  to  sing  them  a  song.  She  was  as  pre- 
cocious intellectually  as  Maria,  but  as  docile 
and  amenable  as  her  sister  was  impatient  and 
rebellious ;  her  father  put  it,  "the  one  must 
be  bound  by  a  chain ;  the  other  may  be  led  by 


PAULINE   VIARDOT  GARCIA 
1821-1910 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE    GARCIA  2"] 

a  silken  thread."  At  an  early  age  she  could 
speak  five  languages  easily,  and  when  she  was 
eight  we  find  her  perched  on  a  high  stool  play- 
ing accompaniments  for  her  father's  singing 
lessons.  Later  she  became  a  pupil  of  Liszt's. 
She  was  only  eleven  when  her  father  died — 
too  young  to  have  had  her  voice  trained  by 
him.  She  always  held  that  her  mother  was 
her  teacher,  but  it  is  more  likely  that  she  her- 
self and  her  brother,  between  them,  were  re- 
sponsible for  her  excellent  method  of  singing. 

In  1838  she  made  a  concert  tour  in  Germany 
with  her  brother-in-law,  de  Beriot,  and  a  year 
later  made  her  operatic  debut  in  both  London 
and  Paris  as  Desdemona  and  La  Cenerentola. 
Theophile  Gautier  promptly  hailed  her  as  "a 
star  of  the  first  magnitude."  Her  girlish 
charm,  despite  her  plain  features,  won  all 
hearts  at  once,  and  her  mezzo-soprano  voice 
of  wide  compass,  though  not  of  strictly  beau- 
tiful texture,  had  in  it  an  unusual  power  to  stir 
the  emotions.  Within  a  short  time  this  girl 
of  eighteen  was  singing  first  roles  in  the  com- 
pany with  Lablache,  Grisi,  Rubini,  Tamburini 
and  Persiani. 

In  1840  she  married  Louis  Viardot,  a 
Frenchman  who  had  made  some  name  for  him- 
self in  letters  and  the  dramatic  world,  and  with 
whom  she  lived  happily  for  more  than  forty 
years. 

A  grand  tour  of  the  Italian  opera  houses  of 


28      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Europe  soon  made  her  well  and  favorably 
known  in  Madrid,  Vienna,  St.  Petersburg, 
Moscow,  Edinboro  and  Dublin,  although  she 
never  sang  publicly  in  Italy.  Everywhere  she 
was  accepted  as  an  artist  of  the  highest  rank. 
Meyerbeer's  vogue  was  at  its  zenith,  and 
Pauline  soon  became  famous  for  her  im- 
personation of  the  heroines  in  "Robert  le 
Diable"  and  "Les  Huguenots."  She  was,  too, 
the  inspiration  and  creator  of  the  great  role  of 
Fides  in  "Le  Prophete,"  which  was  first  pro- 
duced in  1849,  and  with  her  interpretation  of  it 
made  a  great  sensation  in  the  word  of  opera. 
This  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  her  roles,  sung 
by  her  in  all  some  two  hundred  times,  but  per- 
haps not  greater  than  that  of  Orphee  in  Gliick's 
undying  opera,  which  was  revived  for  her  in 
i860  at  the  Theatre  Lyrique  in  Paris,  and  in 
which  she  sang  more  than  a  hundred  times.  In 
1861  Gliick's  "Alceste"  afforded  her  another 
opportunity  to  display  her  splendid  art. 

She  retired  from  the  operatic  stage  in  1863 
and  lived  in  Baden  till  1871,  when  she  returned 
to  Paris.  There  she  gathered  about  her  many 
pupils  and  friends,  with  whom  she  passed  use- 
fully and  happily  the  remaining  years  of  her 
life.  She  died  in  1910,  nearly  three-quarters 
of  a  century  after  her  sister. 

Madame  Viardot-Garcia's  appeal  was  always 
to  the  cognoscenti  rather  than  to  the  unthink- 
ing public.    Neither  her  face  nor  her  tall,  lean 


MARIA   AND    PAULINE    GARCIA  29 

figure  were  ingratiating  at  first  sight,  and  her 
voice,  despite  its  range  and  technical  facility, 
always  had  a  somewhat  thin,  harsh  timbre. 
But  the  noble  artistic  nature  of  the  woman, 
her  superb  musicianship,  her  great  skill  as  an 
actress  and  the  vivid  expressiveness  of  her  in- 
terpretations won  the  praise  of  the  best  mu- 
sicians in  Europe.  Liszt  wrote  of  her:  "In  all 
that  concerns  method  and  execution,  feeling 
and  expression,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  name 
worthy  to  be  mentioned  with  Malibran's 
sister.  In  her,  virtuosity  serves  only  as  a 
means  of  expressing  the  idea,  the  thought,  the 
character  of  a  work  or  a  role." 

Schumann,  in  token  of  his  great  admiration, 
wrote  for  her  the  cycle  of  songs,  Opus  24,  and 
Wagner  has  recorded  his  approbation  of  the 
masterly  fashion  in  which  she  sang  for  him  at 
sight  a  whole  act  of  Isolde. 

She  was  an  exemplary  artist  in  all  her  roles, 
but  was  exceptionally  fine  in  the  operas  of 
Gliick  and  Meyerbeer,  and  left  the  operatic 
world  appreciably  richer  by  means  of  her  su- 
perb interpretation  of  them.  As  a  teacher  of 
singing,  after  her  retirement  from  the  stage, 
her  influence  was  not  so  great,  but  she  was 
able  to  pass  on  worthily  to  the  present  genera- 
tion the  great  traditions  and  experience  of  her 
family. 

Maria  Garcia  belonged  to  the  romantic 
school  of  singing,  poignant,  exuberant  and  per- 


30      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

sonal,  making  a  quick  appeal  to  the  emotions 
and  dependent,  in  great  part,  on  the  moods  and 
impulses  of  the  hour ;  the  art  of  Pauline  Garcia 
was  of  the  classic  order,  impersonal,  restrained, 
striking  deep,  but  not  less  moving  and  all  the 
more  satisfactory  because  of  its  serenity  and 
reposeful  power. 


Catalan!  an6~pasta 


ANGELICA    CATALANI   (1780-1849) 
GIUDITTA  NEGRI  PASTA  (1798-1865) 


WO  stars  of  the  first  magnitude 
were  shining  brightly  in  the  musi- 
cal heavens  in  the  early  part  of  the 
last  century — Angelica  Catalani  and 
Giuditta  Pasta.  Nature  had  bestowed  on 
Catalani  every  physical  gift  that  could  con- 
tribute to  her  success  as  a  singer,  and,  in  ad- 
dition, a  lovable,  wholesome  disposition,  but 
had  neglected  to  endow  her  with  musical  in- 
stincts or  serious  artistic  ambition.  From 
Pasta,  on  the  contrary,  Nature  had  with- 
held beauty  of  voice  and  person,  com- 
pensating for  this  lack  by  a  generous  endow- 
ment of  lofty  artistic  ideals,  sustained  by  un- 
usual intelligence  and  perseverance.  It  is 
both  interesting  and  instructive,  in  view  of  this 
absolute  contrast  in  natural  equipment,  to 
study  simultaneously  the  lives  of  these  two 
women  and  to  reassure  ourselves  once  again 
that  the  race  is  not  always  to  the  swift,  and 
that,  without  a  great  voice,  one  can  sometimes 
become  a  great  singer. 
3i 


32      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Angelica  Catalani  was  born  in  Sinigaglia, 
Italy,  in  1780.  Her  father  was,  at  the  time 
of  her  birth,  a  well-to-do  man  with  social 
ambitions,  and,  in  order  to  give  her  the  proper 
start  in  life,  he  sent  her  early  to  school  at  the 
fashionable  convent  of  Santa  Lucia  at  Gubbio. 
Music  was  an  important  feature  in  the  school 
curriculum,  and  the  singing  of  the  choir  en- 
joyed considerable  celebrity  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. It  was  not  long  before  Angelica,  with 
her  lovely  voice  and  person,  became  the  cen- 
tral figure  in  the  choir,  and  people  came  from 
far  and  near  to  hear  and  look  at  her. 
Sometimes  she  would  sing  a  solo  so  ex- 
quisitely that  the  congregation  would  break 
into  applause,  much  to  the  horror  of  the 
bishop,  who  remonstrated  solemnly  thereat 
with  the  mother  superior.  The  good  lady 
hearkened  dutifully  to  his  words,  and  with- 
drew Angelica  to  the  rear  row  in  the  choir, 
where  she  was  less  visible,  even  if  no  less 
audible. 

Everybody  advised  an  operatic  career  for 
the  gifted  girl,  but  her  father  was  ambitious 
to  marry  her  brilliantly,  and  finally  renounced 
these  worldly  ideas  only  when  business  re- 
verses forced  him  to  yield.  At  the  age  of 
fourteen  Angelica  was  sent  to  Florence  to 
study  singing  under  Marchesi,  a  male  soprano 
and  teacher  of  great  renown.  She  was  with 
him    for  about  two   years  and   undoubtedly 


CATALANI    AND    PASTA  33 

learned  from  him  much  that  was  worth 
knowing,  but  also  acquired  the  florid  style 
that,  later,  she  developed  to  the  point  of  ab- 
surdity. In  1795  she  made  her  operatic  debut 
in  Venice  in  an  opera  by  one  Nasolini.  Her 
success  was  immediate  with  the  general  public, 
who  went  into  raptures  over  her  beauty,  her 
noble  bearing  and  her  superb  voice.  The 
cognoscenti  alone  took  notice  that  she  was  no 
actress  and  no  musician.  From  Venice  she 
went  to  other  large  Italian  cities,  and  every- 
where wras  welcomed  as  a  rising  star  of 
transcendent  brilliance. 

As  all  through  her  long  career  she  owed 
all  her  success  to  Nature  and  practically  noth- 
ing to  art,  her  singing  must  have  been  nearest 
perfection  in  those  early  days,  before  too  easy 
triumphs,  flattery  and  fatigue  had  tarnished 
the  luster  of  her  unequaled  gifts.  Her  voice 
was  powerful,  rich  and  clear,  nearly  three 
octaves  in  compass  and  extending  upwards 
easily  to  the  G  in  altissimo.  Such  flexibility 
was  without  precedent — runs,  trills,  roulades, 
every  vocal  flourish,  were  accomplished  with- 
out apparent  effort.  Her  chromatic  scales, 
both  ascending  and  descending,  adorned  with 
incidental  crystalline  trills,  were  simply  awe- 
inspiring.  No  singer  before  or  since  has  car- 
ried such  a  variegated  and  bewildering 
box  of  vocal  tricks.  Knowing  and  cool- 
headed  critics  observed  that  a  curiously  per- 


34      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

sistent  oscillation  of  the  lower  jaw  in  rapid 
passages  detracted  from  the  perfection  of  her 
coloratura,  but  her  vocal  excellences  were  so 
many  and  so  extraordinary  that  it  seemed 
hypercritical  not  to  accept  the  voice  as  a  prac- 
tically perfect  instrument. 

In  her  early  days  she  affected  a  sentimental 
style  of  singing,  which,  as  her  voice  was 
neither  passionate  nor  sympathetic  in  quality, 
fitted  her  ill ;  but  later  she  was  wise  enough  to 
abandon  her  attempts  at  tenderness  and  be- 
came what  Nature  planned  her  for — the  great- 
est of  all  bravura  singers.  To  the  end  of  her 
days,  she  never  learned  to  read  music,  to  play 
any  instrument  or  to  sing  strictly  in  time. 

In  1804  she  went  to  Lisbon  to  sing,  and 
there  fell  in  love  with  a  French  military  man 
named  Valabregue.  He  was  not  in  any  way 
a  desirable  match,  but  to  all  expostulation  she 
replied  simply,  "But  what  a  fine-looking 
man !"  and  before  long  married  him.  If 
her  husband  had  possessed  some  of  the 
worthy  ambitions  that  she  lacked,  he  might 
have  made  a  great  artist  of  her,  after  all ;  but 
for  art  he  cared  not  a  fig — his  only  aim  in 
life  was  to  fill  and  empty  his  pockets  with  all 
possible  celerity.  To  him  his  wife's  voice  was 
merely  a  source  of  income.  The  result  was 
that,  although  Catalani  remained  before  the 
public  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  after 


CATALANI    AND    PASTA  35 

her  marriage,  the  passage  of  years  added  not 
an  inch  to  her  artistic  stature. 

In  1806  she  gave  three  concerts  at  the  Paris 
opera  before  enraptured  audiences.  Napoleon 
himself  made  her  an  offer  that  would  keep  her 
in  Paris  on  her  own  terms,  but  she  took  a  dis- 
like to  him  and  stole  away  to  London,  never 
to  return  to  France  so  long  as  he  was  in 
power. 

She  possessed  every  quality  likely  to  please 
the  British  public,  including  a  hatred  of 
Napoleon,  and  from  the  very  first  was  treated 
by  them  as  a  goddess  descended  from  Olympus 
to  delight  them  with  her  voice.  In  1807  her 
total  profits  in  England  were  $80,000.  For 
singing  "God  Save  the  King"  or  Rule,  Brit- 
annia," she  was  sometimes  paid  as  much  as 
$1,000,  and  for  a  festival  $10,000 — there  were 
no  phonographs  a  century  ago  to  augment 
these  modest  emoluments !  Sometimes,  after 
one  of  Napoleon's  victories,  His  Majesty's 
Government  would  engage  her  to  sing  patri- 
otic songs  in  her  best  broken  English  at  public 
meetings,  in  order  to  instil  new  courage  into 
the  hearts  of  the  people. 

In  February,  1815,  after  the  abdication  of 
Napoleon,  she  returned  to  Paris ;  and,  later, 
during  The  Hundred  Days,  followed  the 
court  into  exile  at  Ghent.  After  Waterloo, 
she  made  a  triumphal  progress  through  Ger- 
many, Denmark,  Sweden  and  Belgium.     The 


36      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

ensuing  winter  Louis  XVIII  granted  her  the 
Theatre  Italien  in  Paris,  with  a  yearly  sub- 
vention of  $32,000  and  a  free  hand  as 
manager. 

This  arrangement  was  entirely  to  Vala- 
bregue's  taste,  and  he  proceeded  without  delay 
to  squeeze  the  Parisian  public  for  the  bene- 
fit of  his  own  pocket.  He  held  that  his  wife 
and  "four  or  five  puppets"  constituted  a  suf- 
ficiently good  opera  company,  and  selected  his 
artists  on  this  basis.  He  reduced  the  orches- 
tra in  size  and  quality,  and  mounted  the 
operas  in  most  parsimonious  fashion.  In 
every  way  he  could  devise  he  sought  to  gain 
money  with  which  to  gratify  his  wife's  and 
his  extravagant  tastes.  For  a  time  everything 
prospered  with  them  and  they  were  able  to 
live  like  millionaires.  (The  bill  for  their 
servants'  beer  alone  amounted  in  one  year  to 
about  $600!)  It  must  be  added,  in  Catalani's 
favor,  that  all  her  life  she  was  ready  to  sing 
and  to  give  her  own  money  for  charity. 

Catalani's  operatic  repertory  was  a  meager 
one,  and  now  was  reduced  to  a  number  of  so- 
called  operas,  which  were,  in  reality,  nothing 
but  a  hodge-podge  of  songs  gathered  from 
all  sources  for  the  purpose  of  displaying  her 
vocal  tricks.  She  paid  little  or  no  attention  to 
the  action  of  the  piece  and  wandered  on  and 
off  the  stage  at  her  own  sweet  will.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  such  treatment  did  not  wear 


CATALANI    AND    PASTA  37 

well  with  the  Parisians  and  that  before  long 
she  was  singing  to  empty  houses.  Within  two 
years  the  theatre  was  ruined  and  Catalani's 
own  fortune  seriously  impaired. 

To  refill  her  depleted  purse,  Catalani  started 
on  a  tour  through  the  countries  of  Northern 
Europe,  which  was  destined  to  last  about  ten 
years.  Her  voice  had  begun  to  lose  some  of 
its  finer  attributes,  but  it  was  still  a  splendid 
organ,  and  her  beauty  was  as  queenly  as  ever. 
She  sang  mostly  in  concert,  occasionally  in 
opera.  In  1824  she  reappeared  in  London, 
where  the  most  loyal  of  all  publics  gave  her 
a  hearty  welcome.  She  continued  her  wan- 
derings, with  ever-diminishing  returns,  till 
1828,  when,  in  Dublin,  she  appeared  in  public 
for  the  last  time. 

The  remaining  twenty  years  of  her  life  she 
spent  at  her  villa  near  Florence,  active  in 
good  works  and  her  family  life,  a  kindly,  pious 
woman.    She  died  in  1849. 

Of  Catalani's  voice  I  have  said  enough — 
only  a  marvelous  organ  could  have  rendered 
tolerable  a  style  of  singing  and  an  attitude 
towards  a  great  art  so  meretricious  and  fan- 
tastic. In  her  small  repertory  were  two  of 
Mozart's  operas,  "Le  Nozze  di  Figaro"  and 
"La  Clemenza  di  Tito,"  but  they  were  not 
favorites  with  her,  because  in  them  she  was 
obliged  to  sing  in  time.  She  much  preferred 
operas,  or  arrangements  of  operas,  in  which 


23- 


38      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

she  was  free  to  take  such  liberties  with  the 
music  as  suited  her  momentary  impulse.  Al- 
though a  majestic  figure  in  serious  opera  and 
a  charming  one  in  light  parts,  she  was  com- 
pletely at  ease  only  in  concert. 

In  both  opera  and  concert  she  wished  al- 
ways to  be  "the  whole  show,"  and,  to  achieve 
this  end,  did  all  in  her  power  to  prevent  good 
artists,  who  might  win  applause  for  them- 
selves, from  appearing  on  the  same  stage  with 
her. 

Her  most  famous  song  was  an  air  with 
elaborate  variations  called  "Son  Regina"  ("I 
am  Queen"),  by  Rode.  In  later  life,  when 
her  voice  had  lost  something  of  its  flexibility, 
though  not  its  power,  she  used  to  sing  an  ar- 
rangement of  the  bass  air  in  "Le  Nozze  di 
Figaro,"  "Non  piu  andrai,"  in  which  her 
clarion  tones  pierced  the  loudest  orchestra  with 
thrilling  effect.  Another  tour  de  force 
was  the  imitation  of  the  swell  and  fall  of  a 
bell,  which  she  would  execute  with  super- 
human clearness  and  control  of  power.  Then 
there  was  a  sort  of  double  falsetto  in  altissimo, 
which  enthusiasts  likened  to  the  highest  notes 
of  a  nightingale. 

It  may  already  have  been  surmised  that  she 
was  not  attentive  to  criticism  from  any  source. 
Once,  in  Germany,  a  musician  of  standing 
ventured  to  speak  unfavorably  of  her  musi- 
cianship.    "He  is  an  impious  man,"  she  said, 


CATALANI    AND    PASTA  39 

"for  when  God  has  given  to  a  mortal  so  ex- 
traordinary a  talent  as  mine,  everybody 
should  honor  and  applaud  it  as  a  miracle.  It 
is  profane  to  depreciate  the  gifts  of  Heaven." 

A  final  pen-picture  is  worth  reproducing. 
It  was  written  by  a  journalist  contemporary 
with  her: 

"When  she  begins  one  of  the  interminable 
roulades  up  the  scale,  she  gradually  raises 
her  body,  which  she  had  before  stooped  almost 
to  a  level  with  the  ground,  until,  having  won 
her  way  with  a  quivering  lip  and  a  chattering 
chin  to  the  very  topmost  note,  she  tosses  back 
her  head  and  all  its  nodding  feathers  with  an 
air  of  triumph;  then  suddenly  falls  to  a  note 
two  octaves  and  a  half  lower,  with  incredible 
aplomb,  and  smiles  like  a  victorious  amazon 
over  a  conquered  enemy." 

Just  as  extraordinary  as  the  beauty  of 
Catalani's  voice  was  Pasta's  power  as  a  dra- 
matic singer.  Catalani's  life  is  a  record  of 
great  gifts  unused  or  squandered ;  Pasta's  one 
of  mediocrity  transformed  into  excellence. 

Giuditta  Negri,  known  in  history  as  Pasta, 
by  reason  of  her  marriage  with  an  obscure 
singer  of  that  name,  was  born  of  Jewish  par- 
entage in  Como;  near  Milan,  in  1798.  Little 
is  known  about  her  early  life  and  surround- 
ings, except  that  she  studied  first  under  the 
chapel-master  in  her  native  town  and  later  in 


40      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

the  Conservatorio  in  Milan.  In  1815  she 
made  her  professional  debut  in  Brescia,  sing- 
ing a  little  later  in  Parma  and  Leghorn,  with- 
out arousing  any  enthusiasm  for  her  voice  or 
art.  In  1816  she  was  in  Paris  as  one  of 
Catalani's  "puppets,"  and  in  181 7  in  Lon- 
don with  Fodor ;  but  she  made  no  im- 
pression in  either  city  and  returned  to 
Italy  practically  as  unknown  as  when  she 
left  it. 

The  cause  of  these  early  failures  was  not 
far  to  seek.  Her  voice  was  coarse,  inflexible, 
inclined  to  huskiness  and  often  off  the  pitch; 
her  features  were  commonplace  and  her  figure 
squat  and  awkward.  It  needed  some  years  of 
severe  self-discipline  to  impart  to  her1  person 
that  air  which  made  her,  like  the  diminutive 
Garrick,  seem  six  feet  tall,  and  to  render  her 
voice  one  of  the  most  expressive  and  stirring 
of  which  we  have  any  record.  In  the  young 
Jewess  was  the  consciousness  of  power,  the 
germ  of  the  great  artist ;  her  failures  but  fur- 
nished her  with  the  key  to  her  own  problems. 

After  two  years  of  hard  study,  in  1819  and 
1820,  she  sang  in  Milan  and  Rome  with  suc- 
cess, and  in  182 1  and  1822  reappeared  in 
Paris,  where  even  the  most  critical  now  ac- 
cepted her  as  the  greatest  dramatic  singer  of 
the  day.  Her  principal  roles  were  in  "Otello" 
(Rossini),  "Tancredi"  (Rossini),  "Romeo  e 
Giulietta"    (Zingarelli)    (in   which   she  took 


GIUDITTA    NEGRI    PASTA 
1798-1865 


CATALANI    AND   PASTA  41 

the  part  of  Romeo),  "Nina"  (Paesiello)  and 
"Medea"  (Mayer),  in  all  of  which  she  was 
held  to  be  incomparable. 

The  refractory  voice  was  now  a  soprano 
of  good  range,  almost  docile,  almost  beauti- 
ful, wholly  convincing  and  frequently  thrill- 
ing. In  an  epoch  when  singers  strove  to  outdo 
each  other  in  opulence  and  fantasy  of  orna- 
ment, Pasta  created  a  new  fashion  by  the  re- 
straint and  chastity  of  her  embellishments. 
She  never  improvised.  Whatever  she  did  on 
the  stage  had  been  conceived  and  elaborated 
in  her  studio.  The  labor  she  had  to  expend 
in  order  to  master  her  music  gave  to  her  ren- 
derings an  authority  and  dignity  quite  her 
own,  while  a  fine  instinctive  sense  of  rhythm 
furnished  a  solid  foundation  for  the  loftiest 
musical  superstructure. 

She  had  no  capacity  for  comedy,  but  in 
serious  or  tragic  parts  was  thoroughly  at  home 
and  able  to  stir  her  audiences  profoundly. 
The  majesty  of  her  carriage  and  the  sweep 
of  her  gestures  were  superb.  She  was  the 
classic  artist  par  excellence.  In  men's  parts 
she  was  especially  convincing.  Talma,  the 
great  French  actor,  once  watched  her  play 
in  "Tancredi"  (an  operatic  setting  of  Voltaire's 
tragedy)  witih  intense  interest,  and  said  to  her 
afterward  :  "You  realize  my  ideal ;  you  pos- 
sess the  secret  I  have  sought  to  discover.  To 
touch  the  heart  is  the  aim  of  the  true  artist." 


42      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

For  six  years  she  alternated  between  Lon- 
don and  Paris  and  then  returned  to  Italy. 
The  self-restraint  of  her  style  did  not  alto- 
gether please  the  Neapolitans,  but  in  the  North 
she  was  accepted  at  her  real  value  and  the 
recipient  of  every  possible  honor.  Bellini 
wrote  for  her  "La  Sonnambula"  (1831)  and 
Norma"  (1832),  in  both  of  which  she 
achieved  memorable  successes.  Into  every 
part  she  played  she  poured  her  creative  power 
so  generously  that  her  impersonations  seemed 
to  be  real  people.  Even  Amina  in  "Sonnam- 
bula," a  role  quite  different  from  those  that 
had  made  her  famous,  was  invested  by  her 
with  a  grace  and  a  girlish  charm  as  delight- 
ful as  they  were  unexpected. 

In  1833  she  returned  to  Paris  with  an  en- 
larged repertory,  including  "Anna  Bolena" 
(Anne  Boleyn),  which  Donizetti  had  written 
for  her.  In  this  new  work,  with  Lablache,  a 
superb  Henry  VIII,  at  her  side,  she  won  a 
fresh  triumph. 

Since  her  departure  for  Italy,  six  years 
ago,  a  new  star  had  swung  into  the  heavens 
— on  the  lips  of  everybody  now  were  the 
names  of  Pasta  and  Malibran.  The  two 
prima  donnas  sang  the  same  serious  roles 
and  each  had  her  ardent  and  argumentative 
partisans.  Malibran  had  the  better  voice  and 
made  a  quicker  appeal  to  the  public  by  means 
of  her  fervid  talents,  but  she  was  the  creature 


CATALAN  I    AND    PASTA  43 

of  impulse,  whose  most  striking  effects  were 
often  the  fruit  of  sudden  inspiration,  and,  con- 
sequently, not,  in  the  truest  sense,  creative. 
Pasta,  in  contrast,  created,  because  her  in- 
spiration was  guided  by  premeditation.  In- 
spiration, when,  left  to  itself,  is  often  only  a 
flash  in  the  pan;  it  needs  the  discipline  of 
premeditation  to  make  its  expression  con- 
sistently true.  The  singer  must  never  trust 
to  chance  for  his  effects.  He  should  prepare 
his  interpretation  line  by  line,  note  by  note, 
so  that  when,  before  the  public,  though  every 
external  circumstance  be  against  him,  his  offer- 
ing shall  clearly  indicate  the  intention  behind 
the  manifestation.  This  capacity  always  to 
express  the  intention  was  Pasta's  to  an  un- 
usual degree  and  raised  her  above  all  the  sing- 
ers of  her  time,  even  above  "the  spoiled  child 
of  Nature,"  Malibran. 

Unfortunately,  Pasta's  prime  was  short — 
scarcely  more  than  ten  years.  So  early  as 
1833  her  voice  was  often  untrue  to  pitch  and 
had  lost  something  of  its  expressiveness,  al- 
though as  an  actress  she  was  greater  than 
ever.  Four  years  later,  in  London,  the  voice 
was  a  mere  wreck.  Pasta  was  not  yet  forty, 
and  it  is  probable  that  the  early  failure  of  her 
voice  was  due  to  the  severe  discipline  to  which 
she  had  always  had  to  subject  it  in  order  to 
keep  it  obedient.  Whatever  the  cause,  the 
voice  had  gone,  and  shortly  afterward  Pasta 


44      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

retired  from  the  stage.  A  professional  visit 
to  St.  Petersburg  in  1840  was  a  complete 
fiasco. 

In  1850  she  returned  to  London  for  two 
appearances,  at  which  she  essayed  scenes  from 
her  most  famous  parts.  Many  of  her  old  ad- 
mirers were  on  hand,  and  many  younger  peo- 
ple, who*  had  come  to  hear  for  themselves  the 
great  artist  of  whom  they  had  heard  so  much 
from  others.  Rachel,  the  French  tragedienne, 
was  there,  and  Pauline  Viardot-Garcia, 
neither  of  whom  had  ever  heard  her.  In  the 
voice  itself  survived  no  trace  of  its  former 
eloquence,  but  the  old  spirit  and  the  old 
artistic  intention  remained  to  delight  those  that 
could  penetrate  the  outward  seeming.  Rachel 
saw  only  the  ruin  and  was  outspoken  in  her 
ridicule ;  but  Manuel  Garcia's  daughter  was 
quick  to  separate  the  apparent  from  the  real. 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  programme  she 
turned  to  her  companion  and,  with  tears  in 
her  eyes,  said :  "It  is  like  the  Last  Supper 
of  Da  Vinci — a  wreck,  but  still  the  greatest 
picture  in  the  world." 

In  1829  Pasta  had  bought  a  villa  near  Lake 
Como,  which  became  her  permanent  home. 
Here,  surrounded  by  family,  friends,  pupils 
and  flowers,  she  lived  quietly  till  her  death  in 
1865. 

Few  great  artists  have  left  behind  them  as 
few  memories  of  their  private  lives  as  has 


CATALANI    AND    PASTA  45 

Pasta.  But,  after  all,  it  is  the  artist,  not  the 
woman,  that  concerns  us.  We  shall  search 
musical  history  in  vain  to  find  among  female 
singers  her  superior  in  serious  roles.  Viardot- 
Garcia,  in  equipment  and  artistic  point  of 
view,  bears  a  certain  likeness  to  her,  for  both 
women,  triumphing  over  physical  disabilities, 
rose  to  lofty  heights  by  means  of  the  strength 
and  truth  of  their  artistic  natures. 

If  Catalani  had  only  had  Pasta's  artistic  na- 
ture; or  if  Pasta  had  only  had  Catalani's 
glorious  voice  and  beauty — but  how  vain  it  is 
to  hope  for  perfection  in  this  imperfect 
world ! 


Xuigi  Cablacfye 

(1794-1858) 

HO  was  the  greatest  singer  that 
ever  lived?"  "Don't  you  suppose 
that  Caruso  is  the  greatest  tenor 
the  world  has  known?"  "Is  Mel- 
ba's  voice  as  lovely  as  Patti's  was?"  One  fre- 
quently hears  such  questions  as  these,  but  one 
never  hears  a  satisfactory  answer  to  them,  for 
the  excellent  reason  that  no  satisfactory  an- 
swer is  possible.  Singers,  like  actors  and  ora- 
tors, and  unlike  painters  and  sculptors,  leave 
no  records  of  their  art  behind  them.  Their 
song  once  sung  may  linger  for  a  while  in  the 
memory  of  their  hearers,  but  it  is,  after  all, 
only  a  memory,  pretty  sure  sooner  or  later  to 
fade  into  oblivion.  The  phonograph,  wonder- 
ful machine  though  it  be,  can  never  reproduce 
anything  more  than  the  cruder  and  more  ob- 
vious qualities  of  a  singer's  voice  and  art,  and 
leaves  unrecorded  the  personal  magnetism  and 
the  thousand  subtleties  that  are  the  secret  and 
essence  of  a  great  singer's  power  over  his  audi- 
ence. The  only  knowledge  or  opinion  we  can 
have  of  a  voice  that  we  have  never  heard  is 
that  derived  from  hearsay,  and  it  has  all  the 
vagueness  and  unreliability  that  is  character- 
istic of  hearsay. 

46 


LTJIG1    LABLACHE 
1794-1858 


LUIGI    LABLACHE  47 

Nevertheless,  it  is  interesting  to  rummage  in 
the  dusty  volumes  of  musical  history  and  rem- 
iniscence and  to  exhume  the  estimates  of  old 
singers  as  recorded  by  their  contemporaries. 
Although  a  singer's  fame  is  fleeting,  we  find  in 
musical  history  the  names  of  a  score  or  two  of 
singers  who,  by  means  of  their  voices  and 
their  art,  made  upon  their  own  generation  such 
a  profound  impression  that  their  fame  and  tri- 
umphs have  come  down  to  us  with  a  com- 
pleteness of  description  that  enables  us  to  form 
for  ourselves  some  sort  of  understanding  of 
their  great  qualities. 

Of  all  the  singers  of  the  nineteenth  century 
none  has  left  behind  him  such  a  fragrant  and 
delightful  memory  as  has  Luigi  Lablache. 
Big  in  voice,  stature,  mind  and  heart,  rich  in 
musical  and  histrionic  talent,  he  was  the  dom- 
inating personality  whenever  and  wherever  he 
sang.  To  hear  him  was  to  provide  one's  self 
with  a  never-fading  memory  of  complete  musi- 
cal satisfaction ;  to  know  him  personally  was 
to  love  and  to  admire  him. 

Lablache  was  born  in  Naples  in  1794,  and 
died  in  the  same  city  in  1858.  His  father, 
a  French  merchant,  had  been  driven  from  his 
home  in  Marseilles  in  1791  by  the  Revolu- 
tion ;  his  mother  was  Irish.  His  musical  gifts 
showed  themselves  early,  and  as  a  child  he 
was  taught  the  elements  of  music,  as  well  as 
singing,  at  the  Conservatorio  della  Pieta  dei 


48      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Turchini  in  Naples.  In  addition,  he  developed 
considerable  skill  in  the  playing  of  stringed  in- 
struments, and  might  well  have  had  a  suc- 
cessful career  as  a  violinist  or  'cellist,  if  his 
voice  had  not  led  him  into  operatic  paths. 
The  soundness  and  thoroughness  of  his  early 
musical  training  were  of  great  value  to  him  all 
through  his  life.  In  1809,  when  he  was  fifteen, 
he  sang  the  contralto  solos  in  the  performance 
of  Mozart's  Requiem,  given  in  Naples  on  the 
death  of  Haydn.  Shortly  afterwards  his  voice 
broke  and  within  two  or  three  years  developed 
into  a  truly  magnificent  bass. 

As  a  boy,  Lablache  was  full  of  mischief  and 
good  spirits,  and  but  little  disposed  towards 
study  and  hard  work.  His  great  passion  was 
for  the  stage  and  no  less  than  five  times  he 
ran  away  from  the  conservatory,  in  order  to 
take  part  in  operatic  performances  in  small 
theatres.  Each  time  he  was  brought  back  in 
disgrace,  but  in  18 12  he  was  graduated  from 
the  conservatory  and  made  his  debut  in  "La 
Molinara,"  by  Fioravanti,  at  the  San  Carlino 
Theatre  in  Naples,  a  small  opera  house  where 
they  gave  two  performances  a  day.  At  this 
time,  too,  he  married  Teresa  Pinotti,  the 
daughter  of  an  actor,  who,  in  the  course  of 
a  long  wedlock,  not  only  bore  him  thirteen 
children,  but  also  exercised  a  thoroughly  bene- 
ficial influence  on  his  life.  Perceiving  the  ex- 
cellence of  his  natural  parts,  she  awakened 


LUIGI    LABLACHE  49 

in  him  a  whole-hearted  ambition  to  develop 
them  to  their  utmost,  which  within  a  very 
short  time  placed  him  on  the  very  pinnacle  of 
operatic  success,  and  kept  him  there  until  old 
age. 

Just  a  hundred  years  ago,  in  1813,  he  made 
his  real  professional  debut  in  Palermo  in  the 
now  forgotten  opera  of  "Marc  Antonio"  by 
Pavesi.  It  is  a  delight  to  pause  for  an  instant 
at  this  point  and  to  try  to  picture  to  ourselves 
this  radiant  youth  on  the  threshold  of  a  career 
in  which  every  early  promise  was  fully  real- 
ized in  the  mature  artist.  At  his  birth  only 
good  fairies  had  presided;  the  bad  ones  all 
stayed  away  !  Lablache  was  very  tall  and  nobly 
proportioned.  His  head  was  large  and  well- 
shaped  ;  his  features  clean-cut  and  expressive. 
His  voice,  both  powerful  and  flexible,  ranged 
from  the  E-flat  below  the  bass  staff  to  the 
E-fiat  above.  It  could  be  dramatic  or  tender, 
majestic  or  humorous,  a  trumpet  or  a  'cello. 
As  a  comedian  Lablache  was  inimitable.  His 
laugh  alone,  full-throated  and  hearty,  was 
enough  to  put  a  theatre  in  lasting  good  humor. 
His  comic  play,  while  never  descending  to  buf- 
foonery, was  incomparably  laughable.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  could  play  tragic  parts  with 
true  pathos  and  Olympian  dignity,  his  superb 
physique  lending  itself  perfectly  to  such  im- 
personations. What  wonder  that,  with  such  a 
combination  of  natural  gifts  and  cultivated  tal- 


50      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

ents,  his  career  during  the  next  forty  years 
should  have  been  but  one  long  series  of  tri- 
umphs in  all  the  great  opera  houses  in  Europe ! 

After  several  years  in  Italy  he  filled  his  first 
operatic  engagement  in  Vienna,  where,  inci- 
dentally, in  1827  he  sang  the  solo  bass  part 
in  Mozart's  Requiem  after  the  death  of 
Beethoven — the  work  in  which  he  had  sung  as 
a  child,  eighteen  years  before,  when  Haydn 
died.  In  1830  he  sang  for  the  first  time  in 
both  Paris  and  London.  During  the  next 
twenty  years  it  was  his  custom  to  pass  a  por- 
tion of  each  year  in  these  two  cities,  visiting 
between  times  some  of  the  other  important 
European  opera  houses.  For  several  seasons 
he  sang  in  company  with  Malibran,  Pasta, 
Grisi,  Rubini  and  Tamburini — a  quartet  of 
singers  never  equalled  in  the  interpretation 
of  the  music  of  Rossini,  Bellini,  and  Donizetti. 

Voice,  physique,  musicianship  and  histrionic 
talent  seem  never  to  have  been  blended  so  hap- 
ily  in  any  singer  as  they  were  in  Lablache.  If 
there  were  weak  spots  in  his  equipment  I  do 
not  know  what  they  were — his  contemporaries 
do  not  appear  to  have  discovered  any.  His 
most  famous  roles  were  in  "L'Elisir  d' 
Amore,"  "Don  Pasquale,"  "La  Rinegata,"  "La 
Cenerentola,"  "II  Matrimonio  Segreto,"  "Se- 
miramide,""La  Gazza  Ladra,"  "Norma,"  "Anna 
Bolena,"  "Zaira,"  "II  Barbiere  di  Siviglia," 
"Moise,"  "I  Puritani,"  and  "Don  Giovanni." 


LUIGI    LABLACHE  5 1 

Most  of  these  operas  are  merely  names  to  us 
nowadays,  but  we  can  easily  picture  him  in 
the  still  familiar  "Don  Pasquale"  and  "II  Bar- 
bire,"  as  well  as  in  what  was  one  of  his  most 
famous  impersonations,  Leporello  in  "Don  Gi- 
ovanni." If  he  had  been  born  forty  years 
later  what  a  Hans  Sachs,  what  a  Wotan  and 
what  a  Falstaff  he  would  have  made ! 

Lablache  retained  his  voice  practically  unim- 
paired till  he  was  quite  sixty  years  of  age, 
although  he  grew  so  corpulent  as  to  become 
towards  the  end  all  but  immovable.  Indeed, 
in  his  later  days  he  used  to  sit  in  a  capacious 
chair  placed  in  the  center  of  the  stage  and  sing 
his  music  without  attempting  to  rise  to  his 
feet.  The  incongruity  of  a  basso  buffo  singing 
his  part  from  a  fixed  point  on  the  scene  must 
have  been  striking,  but  Lablache  was  a  privi- 
leged person  with  the  public  and  at  liberty 
to  sit  or  stand,  just  as  he  pleased,  provided 
only  that  he  would  lend  the  luster  of  his  voice 
to  the  musical  performance.  His  death  was 
mourned  universally,  and  left  vacant  in  the 
operatic  world  a  place  that  has  never  been 
completely  filled. 

The  size  and  sonority  of  Lablache's  voice 
were  its  most  obvious  characteristics,  of  which 
many  stories  are  told.  Once,  it  is  said,  his 
wife  was  awakened  at  night  by  the  sound  of 
what  she  took  to  be  the  notes  of  the  fire- 
tocsin — it  was  only  her  husband  uttering  in  his 


52      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

sleep  the  staccato  notes  in  a  duet  from  "Puri- 
tani,"  which  he  had  been  singing  with  Grisi 
that  same  night.  His  upper  D  was  a  stu- 
pendous note,  with  which,  in  great  dramatic 
climaxes,  he  used  to  split  the  ears  of  the 
groundlings.  But  he  never  used  the  full 
strength  of  his  voice  at  inappropriate  times ; 
with  unerring  taste  and  skill  he  always  ad- 
justed its  power  and  quality  to  the  artistic  ne- 
cessities of  the   situation. 

This  trumpet-like  D  of  his  used  to  recall  to 
the  veterans  the  same  note  in  the  voice  of 
Cheron,  the  glory  of  the  Paris  Opera  towards 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Cheron  by 
merely  blowing  into  a  glass  goblet  could  crack 
it;  by  singing  into  it  his  great  D  he  burst  it 
into  a  thousand  pieces. 

Lablache  was  famous  for  his  skill  in  select- 
ing and  wearing  costumes  and  took  the  great- 
est pains  in  regard  to  all  the  details  of  make- 
up. On  the  stage  he  seemed  to  be  a  real  per- 
son and  never  had  the  unnatural,  upholstered 
look  so  common  to  opera  singers  in  costume. 
Whether  in  comedy  or  in  tragedy,  until  his 
size  became  excessive,  his  appearance  was  al- 
ways harmonious  with  the  ideal  stage  picture. 

Although  not  an  educated  man  in  the  usual 
sense,  he  managed  to  acquire  a  great  deal  of 
general  information  which,  combined  with  his 
innate  good  sense,  geniality,  humor  and  tact, 
made  him  a  welcome  guest  in  the  best  society 


LUIGI    LABLACHE  53 

everywhere.  Emperor  Alexander  II  of  Rus- 
sia was  most  cordial  in  his  relations  with  him, 
and  Queen  Victoria,  who  at  one  time  studied 
singing  with  him,  mentions  him  in  her  pub- 
lished diaries  with  affection  and  esteem.  Until 
his  day  it  had  been  the  custom  in  England  at 
musical  parties  where  professional  musicians 
performed  to  stretch  a  cord  across  the  draw- 
ing-room in  order  to  separate  the  musicians 
from  their  hearers  of  the  social  world,  to 
segregate,  so  to  speak,  the  goats  from  the 
sheep.  One  evening,  after  Lablache  had  sung, 
he  was  talking  with  somebody  on  the  other  side 
of  the  cord.  Suddenly  and  unostentatiously  he 
reached  down,  untied  the  cord  and  dropped  it 
quietly  on  the  floor.  The  tradition  was 
broken  once  for  all.  The  cord  was  never 
stretched  again  in  London. 

Of  Lablache's  great  size  and  strength  there 
are  innumerable  stories.  One  day,  in  the 
course  of  a  wearisome  rehearsal,  he  reached 
lazily  into  the  orchestra,  seized  a  double  bass 
by  the  neck  with  one  hand,  lifted  the  instru- 
ment from  the  ground  at  arm's  length,  held  it 
there  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  then  replaced 
it  gently,  all  as  easily  as  if  he  had  been  playing 
with  a  walking-stick.  Often,  as  Leporello,  he 
would  tuck  the  importunate  and  squirming 
Masetto,  though  a  full-sized  man,  under  his 
arm  and  carry  him  off  the  stage  without  the 
least  apparent  effort. 


54      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

His  sense  of  humor  was  delicious.  He  was 
once  lodging  in  the  same  hotel  in  London  with 
General  Tom  Thumb.  A  lady  who  was 
anxious  to  make  the  midget's  acquaintance 
called  one  day  at  the  hotel  and,  by  mistake, 
knocked  at  Lablache's  door,  which  was  opened 
by  the  gigantic  singer  himself.  Somewhat 
startled,  the  lady  said: 

"I  should  like  to  see  General  Tom  Thumb, 
if  you  please." 

"I  am  he,"  answered  Lablache  in  his  deepest 
voice. 

"Oh !  but  I  thought  he  was  a  very  small 
man?" 

"So  I  am,  Madam,  when  I  am  on  exhibition, 
but  when  I  am  at  home  I  always  make  myself 
comfortable." 

Many  men  and  women  have  been  born  well 
equipped  for  a  singer's  career,  but  have  been 
content  to  win  the  easy  successes  that  come  in 
youth  to  such  as  they  and  cease  when  youth 
ceases.  Others,  but  poorly  endowed  by  nature, 
have,  by  means  of  unsparing,  intelligent  labor, 
achieved  for  themselves  honorable  niches  in 
the  musical  Hall  of  Fame.  Lablache  is  almost 
unique  in  that,  despite  his  royal  inheritance  of 
talents,  he  never  during  his  long  career  relaxed 
his  effort  to  bring  his  art  to  the  full  flower  of 
perfection,  and,  in  consequence,  attained  to  an 
artistic  excellence  that  has  seldom  been 
equalled  in  the  history  of  song. 


'D^ree  Oenors 


GIOVANNI   BATTISTA   RUBINI    (1795-1854) 

ADOLPHE  NOURRIT  (1802-1839) 

GILBERT  DUPREZ  (1806-1896) 


ANUEL  GARCIA,  the  elder,  was 
the  first  of  the  dynasty  of  tenors 
that  has  ruled  the  operatic  kingdom 
for  the  past  hundred  years.  We 
of  this  day  perceive  his  importance  more 
clearly  than  did  his  contemporaries,  many 
of  whom  were  disposed  to  criticize  cer- 
tain imperfections  in  his  voice  and  tempera- 
ment and  to  overlook  his  superlative  excellence 
as  an  all-round  artist.  The  second  of  the  line 
was  Rubini,  who  was  crowned  "King  of  Ten- 
ors" by  his  coevals,  and  whose  name  now, 
seventy  years  after  his  retirement  from  the 
stage,  is  still  symbolic  of  a  glorious  vocal  art. 
At  the  time  that  Rubini  was  playing  on  the 
heart-strings  of  the  public  through  the  me- 
dium of  Italian  song  Adolphe  Nourrit,  at  the 
Paris  Opera,  was  developing  and  fixing  the 
standards  of  a  noble  art  in  harmony  with  the 
55 


56      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

French  artistic  taste.  He  was  succeeded  by 
Gilbert  Duprez,  who,  after  brilliant  successes 
in  Italy,  returned  to  his  native  Paris  to  carry 
on  the  admirable  work  of  Nourrit.  These  two 
Frenchmen  were  in  no  sense  rivals  of  Rubini, 
for  Rubini  had  no  rivals,  and  the  passing  years 
have  dimmed  the  luster  of  their  once  great 
renown,  but  they  were,  both  of  them,  fine 
artists  whose  services  to  vocal  art  are  well 
worthy  of  remembrance. 

Giovanni  Battista  Rubini  was  born  in 
Romano,  near  Bergamo,  Italy,  in  1795.  His 
father,  an  obscure  music  teacher,  had  faith 
in  his  son's  future  from  the  first  and  spared  no 
pains  to  bring  to  flower  a  talent  that  to  the  rest 
of  the  world  was  at  first  scarcely  perceptible. 
At  the  age  of  eight  Giovanni  was  able  to 
fiddle  in  an  orchestra  and  sing  in  a  choir. 
His  first  singing  teacher  dismissed  him  for  his 
lack  of  promise,  but,  notwithstanding,  the 
boy,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  was  given  a  girl's 
part  in  the  theatre  at  Bergamo.  Then  he  be- 
came a  member  of  the  chorus  in  the  Bergamo 
Opera  and  was  allowed  to  fiddle  between  the 
acts.  On  one  occasion  he  substituted  for  a 
solo  singer  and  acquitted  himself  so  well  that 
the  manager  added  to  his  usual  stipend  the 
munificent  sum  of  one  dollar. 

Encouraged  by  this  modest  triumph, 
Giovanni  went  to  Milan  to  seek  an  engage- 
ment, but  was  not  found  worthy  of  even  a 


GIOVANNI   BATTISTA   RUBINI 
1795-1854 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  $7 

place  in  the  chorus.  A  concert  tour,  in  com- 
pany with  a  violinist,  was  a  complete  failure. 
These  rebuffs  must  have  been  disheartening  to 
the  young  man,  but  he  had  faith  in  his  own 
powers  and,  like  Pasta,  utilized  his  early 
failures  as  a  foundation  for  a  great  career. 

Finally,  he  obtained  a  small  engagement  as 
solo  tenor  in  the  opera  at  Pavia  at  a  monthly 
salary  of  ten  dollars.  From  there  he  passed 
progressively  to  Brescia,  Venice  and  Naples. 
The  opera  at  Naples  under  Barbaja's  able 
management  was  one  of  the  most  important 
in  Europe.  It  had  been  especially  rich  in 
tenors,  one  of  whom  had  recently  been  Garcia 
himself,  but,  nevertheless,  young  Rubini  made 
a  favorable  impression  on  the  difficult  Neapol- 
itan public.  Even  now  Barbaja  did  not  per- 
ceive his  potentiality  and  would  only  re-en- 
gage him  at  a  reduced  salary.  Rubini  could 
have  returned  to  the  smaller  theatres  at  in- 
creased rates,  but  was  shrewd  enough  to  see 
that  the  development  of  his  art  needed  just 
such  surroundings  and  opportunities  for 
study  as  Naples  offered  him.  So  he  accepted 
Barbaja's  terms,  promising  him  the  while  to 
get  even  with  him  later. 

Barbaja  sent  him  to  Rome,  where  he 
achieved  his  first  substantial  success  in  Ros- 
sini's "La  Gazza  Ladra."  Not  long  afterward 
Palermo  confirmed  the  verdict  of  Rome.  Little 
is  known  about  those  early  days  and  it  was 


58      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

not  till  1825,  when  Rubini  made  his  debut  at 
the  Theatre  Italien  in  Paris,  that  the  Muse 
of  History  began  to  take  copious  notes  on  his 
doings.  "La  Cenerentola,"  "La  Donna  del 
Lago"  ("The  Lady  of  the  Lake")  and  "Otello," 
all  by  Rossini,  served  to  present  him  to  the 
French  metropolis.  His  triumph  was  imme- 
diate and  undisputed,  but  Barbaja,  to  whom 
he  was  still  under  contract,  would  yield  him 
to  the  Parisians  for  six  months  only  and  then 
recalled  him  to  Naples,  Milan  and  Vienna. 

Garcia  was  the  greatest  interpreter  of  Ros- 
sini's operas  and  it  was  in  the  same  repertory 
that  Rubini  first  made  a  name  for  himself,  but 
it  was  not  till  Rubini  fell  in  with  Bellini  that 
he  found  the  perfect  medium  for  his  peculiar 
gifts.  On  his  return  from  Paris  the  two 
men  met  for  the  first  time,  discovered  a  strong 
mutual  sympathy  and  retired  together  to  the 
country.  There  Bellini,  with  Rubini  at  his 
side,  composed  "11  Pirata"  ("The  Pirate").  In 
1826  Rossini's  florid  style  was  all  the  vogue, 
but  Bellini,  probably  prompted  by  the  tenor, 
incorporated  in  his  opera  a  number  of  simple, 
emotional  melodies  in  the  style  by  which  he 
is  now  remembered. 

The  opera  was  produced  in  1827  with 
Rubini  in  the  cast  and  Rossini's  star  began 
to  set  as  Bellini's  rose  above  the  horizon. 
The  older  man  was  the  greater  musician,  but 
Bellini's  skill  as  a  melodist  outweighed  with 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  59 

the  public  his  weaknesses  as  harmonist  and 
dramatist.  Rubini's  exquisite  voice  and  art 
in  such  tuneful  music  were  irresistible  and  the 
production  of  this  now  obsolete  opera  marked 
the  beginning  of  a  new  school  of  singing. 
Within  a  few  years  "La  Sonnambula," 
"Norma,"  "I  Puritani,"  and  Donizetti's 
"Anna  Bolena"  (written  for  Pasta  and  Ru- 
bini)  brought  it  to  its  fullest  growth. 

In  1 83 1  Rubini  was  free  from  his  contract 
with  Barbaja  and  sang  in  England  for  the  first 
time.  From  then  till  his  final  retirement,  a 
dozen  years  later,  he  divided  his  time  between 
Paris  and  England.  He  was  as  popular  in 
the  English  provinces  as  in  London  and  much 
in  demand  for  concerts  and  festivals,  as  well 
as  for  opera.  He  added  to  his  repertory  the 
Donizetti  operas  as  they  appeared  and  scored 
characteristic  successes  in  "Lucia,"  "Lu- 
crezia  Borgia"  and  "Marino  Faliero." 

During  these  twelve  years  he  was  constantly 
associated  with  what  was  probably  the  most 
wonderful  group  of  singers  ever  assembled — 
Malibran,  Grisi,  Persiani,  Viardot-Garcia, 
Tamburini  and  Lablache,  not  to  mention  others 
who  in  less  brilliant  company  would  have  been 
considered  remarkable.  Perhaps  the  most 
perfect  cast  of  all  was  that  of  "I  Puritani" 
(1835),  Bellini's  last  opera,  written  for  Grisi, 
Rubini,  Tamburini  and  Lablache  and  sung  by 
them  over   and   over  again   in   London   and 


60      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Paris.  Ah,  those  were  the  golden  days  of 
purely  lyric  singing! 

In  1843  Rubini  sang  in  London  and  Paris 
for  the  last  time.  His  voice  was  beginning  to 
show  signs  of  wear,  and,  with  a  wisdom  too 
rare  among  singers,  he  decided  to  retire  before 
it  should  fail  him  altogether.  But  many  of 
the  large  cities  of  Northern  Europe  had  never 
heard  him  and  he  was  persuaded  to  undertake 
a  concert  tour  with  Liszt,  then  in  his  early 
prime,  through  Holland  and  Germany.  They 
parted  company  in  Berlin  and  Rubini  went 
on  to  St.  Petersburg.  At  his  first  concert  in 
the  Russian  capital  he  cleared  over  $10,000. 
Every  honor  was  heaped  on  him  and  Czar 
Nicholas  appointed  him  not  only  "Director  of 
Singing,"  but  also  a  Colonel  in  the  army ! 

The  following  year,  after  a  tour  through 
Italy  and  Vienna,  he  returned  to  Russia,  but 
the  climate  did  not  agree  with  his  voice  and 
he  announced  his  immediate  and  final  retire- 
ment as  a  singer.  He  was  a  rich  man.  During 
his  last  active  years  he  is  said  to  have  derived 
from  his  singing  an  annual  income  of  $40,000, 
and  from  these  large  receipts  he  had  thriftily 
laid  by  a  capital  of  something  like  $600,000. 
He  passed  his  last  years  on  his  estate  at 
Romano,  where  he  died  in  1854. 

In  all  respects  but  one  Rubini  was  insig- 
nificant. He  was  short,  rather  stout,  and 
awkward ;   his    features  were  plain  and  dis- 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  6l 

figured  by  small-pox.  He  had  no  taste  in 
dress  and  would  wear  anything  his  costumer 
chose  to  put  on  him.  He  had  neither  skill  nor 
ambition  as  an  actor  and  strolled  about  the 
stage  much  as  Catalani  had  done,  regardless 
of  his  fellow-singers  and  their  doings.  His 
delivery  of  recitative  and  dialog  was  slov- 
enly, although  he  took  some  pains  with  con- 
certed pieces.  But  when  it  came  time  for  him 
to  sing  a  substantial  solo,  this  commonplace 
little  man  was  transformed  into  an  angel  of 
song,  Israfel  himself.  Then,  indeed,  the  whole 
world  held  its  breath  and  listened,  for  none 
could  resist  the  emotional  appeal  of  his  sing- 
ing. 

Rubini's  voice  ascended  from  E  of  the  bass 
clef  to  high  B  in  chest  quality,  and  then  in  a 
thrilling  falsetto  to  the  F  or  G  above.  His 
breath  control  was  so  complete  that  even  the 
observant  were  often  unable  to  detect  when 
he  replenished  his  lungs.  His  mastery  of  the 
florid  school  of  vocalization,  acquired  as  an 
interpreter  of  Rossini,  contributed  to  the  per- 
fection of  his  delivery  of  Bellini's  melodies. 
Every  resource  of  technique  was  at  his  com- 
mand. One  of  his  most  characteristic  effects 
was  a  sudden  passage  from  loud  to  soft,  or 
from  soft  to  loud — an  effect  that  in  later  years 
he  much  overworked.  He  was  the  first  to  use 
the  vibrato  for  the  expression  of  emotion, 
and  the  first,  too,  to  employ  the  sob  that  ap- 


62      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

peals  so  irresistibly  to  the  many  admirers  of 
Caruso. 

Other  tenors  have  had  voices  as  beautiful 
as  Rubini's  and,  possibly,  technical  skill  as 
great  as  his,  but  none  has  equaled  him  in  his 
ability  to  move  the  hearts  of  his  hearers.  By 
means  of  his  voice  alone  he  could  crowd  into 
his  rendering  of  a  song  a  whole  world  of  love 
and  pathos.  For  this  reason  he  was  remem- 
bered not  by  his  roles  but  by  his  songs,  and 
was  just  as  effective  in  concert  as  in  opera. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  career  his  style  be- 
came full  of  mannerisms  and  exaggerations, 
but,  despite  them  all,  he  never  lost  his  power 
over  the  public.  His  singing  spoke  to  the 
hearts  of  both  the  simple-minded  and  the 
sophisticated.  He  sang  his  last  note  seventy 
years  ago,  but  his  power  to  stir  the  tender 
emotions  that  too  often  lie  dormant  in  our 
breasts  seems  still  to  live  to  prove  to  us  what 
Talma  said  to  Pasta — "The  aim  of  the  true 
artist  is  to  touch  the  human  heart." 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  art  of  singing 
among  the  French  was  at  a  low  ebb.  The  in- 
stinctive love  of  the  Frenchman  for  drama  had 
developed  a  vocal  style  noisy,  exaggerated  and 
quite  neglectful  of  the  amenities  of  bel  canto. 
Fifty  years  later  some  of  the  most  perfect 
performances  of  opera  in  all  Europe  were  to 
be  heard  at  the  Paris  Opera.    This  ameliora- 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  63 

tion  was  due,  in  large  measure,  to  the  art  of 
two  French  tenors,  Adolphe  Nourrit  and  Gil- 
bert Duprez. 

Nourrit  was  born  in  Montpellier,  in  the 
south  of  France,  in  1802.  His  father,  Louis 
Nourrit  ( 1780- 1 831),  was  first  tenor  at  the 
Paris  Opera,  a  position  that  he  held  for  a 
number  of  years,  despite  a  complete  lack  of 
imagination  and  fervor,  because  of  his  excel- 
lent voice  and  reliable  habits.  Through  all  his 
operatic  career  he  carried  on  a  business  in 
diamonds  and  was  determined  that  his  son 
should  be  a  man  of  affairs  and  not  a  singer. 
The  boy  was  sent  early  to  a  reputable  school, 
where  his  intelligence  and  love  of  study  made 
a  good  record  for  him ;  then,  after  some  train- 
ing in  bookkeeping,  he  became  a  clerk  in  a 
life  insurance  office. 

But  Adolphe  had  the  artistic  temperament, 
as  well  as  a  tenor  voice,  and,  unknown  to  his 
father,  began  the  study  of  music  outside  of 
office  hours.  One  day  he  was  practicing  in 
his  room  at  home  when  Manuel  Garcia,  who 
was  a  friend  of  Louis  Nourrit's,  chanced  to 
hear  him.  Garcia  talked  with  him  and  was 
so  much  impressed  by  his  earnestness  that  he 
undertook  to  persuade  the  father  to  allow  his 
son  to  follow  his  natural  bent.  His  plea  was 
reluctantly  granted  and  Adolphe  became  the 
pupil  of  Garcia  himself. 

The    young   man    made   such    good   prog- 


64      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

ress  that  in  1821,  through  his  father's  influ- 
ence, he  made  his  debut  at  the  Paris  Opera  in 
a  small  role  in  Gluck's  "Iphigenie  en  Tauride." 
He  was  received  cordially  by  the  public,  who 
discovered  in  him  all  his  father's  good  qual- 
ities, plus  the  artistic  instincts  that  the  older 
man  lacked.  The  physical  resemblance  be- 
tween father  and  son  was  so  exact  that  in 
1824  Mehul  wrote  for  them  "Les  deux  Salem," 
the  plot  of  which  turned  upon  this  likeness. 
The  opera  was  withdrawn  shortly,  but  better 
opportunities  to  test  Adolphe's  mettle  soon 
presented  themselves. 

Rossini  divined  the  young  tenor's  talent  and 
wrote  for  him  a  part  in  his  new  opera,  "Le 
Siege  de  Corinthe."  With  Garcia  to  coach 
him,  Adolphe  was  able  to  make  a  success  in 
this,  his  first  good  role,  and  when,  in  1826, 
his  father,  said  to  be  jealous  of  his  son's  first 
triumph,  retired  permanently  from  the  stage, 
he  was  appointed  first  tenor  of  the  Paris 
Opera. 

He  was  only  twenty-four  years  of  age,  but 
he  made  his  value  felt  at  once.  During  the 
next  ten  years,  in  addition  to  singing  in  all 
the  standard  repertory,  he  was  the  creator  and 
often  the  inspiration  of  no  less  than  eight 
great  roles.  He  was  the  original  Arnold  in 
Rossini's  "William  Tell"  (1829),  Robert  in 
"Robert  le  Diable"  (Meyerbeer)  (1832), 
Eleazar  in  "La  Juive"  (Halevy)  (1835),  and 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  65 

Raoul  in  "Les  Huguenots"  (Meyerbeer) 
(1836) — all  creations  of  first-rate  importance. 
Only  a  man  of  substantial  gifts  and  accom- 
plishments could  have  borne  such  responsibil- 
ities, but  Nourrit's  voice,  head  and  heart 
equipped  him  well  for  the  task. 

His  figure  was  short  and  rather  too  rotund 
for  comeliness,  but  he  carried  himself  with 
dignity  and  grace  and  dressed  with  rare  taste. 
His  face  was  sympathetic  and  expressive.  As 
an  actor  he  was  equally  skilful  in  both  com- 
edy and  tragedy.  His  voice  was  not  so  full 
or  rich  or  flexible  as  the  best  Italian  voices,  but 
it  was  under  admirable  control  and  unusually 
effective  in  the  head  and  falsetto  registers.  His 
style  was  energetic,  without  being  vociferous; 
elegant  and  resourceful,  rather  than  impas- 
sioned. Indeed,  Nourrit  was  the  embodiment 
of  all  that  the  French  still  consider  most  de- 
sirable in  a  singer. 

But  what  made  him  exceptional  in  his  pro- 
fession were  his  intellectual  versatility  and  his 
attitude  toward  his  art.  He  was  a  serious 
student  of  literature  and  philosophy  and  a 
capable  critic  of  painting.  He  had  poetic  gifts 
and  wrote  librettos  for  ballets  danced  by 
Fanny  Ellsler  and  Taglioni.  He  was  an  ac- 
knowledged authority  on  stagecraft,  to  whom 
the  composers  of  the  time,  especially  Meyer- 
beer, were  indebted  for  much  valuable  con- 
structive criticism.     He  was  the  first  French 


66      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

singer  to  recognize  and  publish  the  beauty  of 
Schubert's  songs. 

His  art  was  a  religion,  of  which  he  was  a 
priest,  bound  to  serve  it  with  affection  and 
reverence.  He  ordered  his  private  life  in  ac- 
cordance with  this  point  of  view  and  tried 
to  ennoble  the  lives  of  his  associates.  He  was 
in  sympathy  with  the  ideals  of  the  Revolution 
of  1830  and  when  the  crisis  came  went  about 
the  city  singing  patriotic  songs  on  the  barri- 
cades and  in  the  theatres.  Most  singers  have 
been  singers  and  nothing  else — Catalani  and 
Rubini,  for  instance;  Nourrit,  quite  aside 
from  his  art,  was  a  useful  and  brilliant  mem- 
ber of  society. 

We  have  now  reached  the  year  1837.  Till 
then  nothing  had  happened  to  give  warning  of 
the  pathetic  end  of  this  admirable  artist  and 
worthy  man.  Since  1826  his  supremacy  at  the 
Paris  Opera  had  been  unshared,  undisputed ; 
no  rival  or  serious  hostile  influence  had  crossed 
his  path;  he  had  been  spared  the  battle  for 
recognition  that  most  opera  singers  have  to 
fight.  It  would  have  been  better  for  him, 
probably,  if  his  nerves  and  will  had  undergone 
the  toughening  influence  of  strife  and  hard- 
ship. He  was  only  thirty-five  years  old ;  his 
powers  gave  no  sign  of  deterioration ;  he  was 
the  idol  of  the  public ;  his  future  seemed  full 
of  rich  promise. 

But  the  management  of  the  opera  had  begun 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  6/ 

to  think  that  an  institution  as  important  as 
theirs  had  grown  to  be  ought  to  have  more 
than  one  tenor  of  first  rank  in  its  employ. 
Gilbert  Duprez,  a  young  Parisian,  had  been 
making  a  name  for  himself  in  Italy.  One  day 
Nourrit  was  told  that  Duprez  had  been  en- 
gaged to  share  with  him  his  onerous  duties. 
He  made  no  remonstrance,  but  his  spirit 
seemed  utterly  broken.  A  few  nights  later, 
in  the  midst  of  a  performance,  he  suffered  a 
nervous  collapse  when  he  saw  Duprez  enter 
the  theatre.  The  next  day  he  sent  in  his  resig- 
nation. Every  argument  was  used  to  dissuade 
him  from  this  step,  but  to  all  expostulation  he 
replied  that  the  mere  thought  of  competition 
on  a  stage  where  for  so  long  he  had  been  free 
from  all  rivalry  was  intolerable.  His  decision 
was  final  and  on  April  i,  1837,  he  sang  in 
Paris  for  the  last  time.  An  overflowing  and 
enthusiastic  public  testified  heartily  to  its  love 
and  admiration  for  the  retiring  artist,  with 
whom  it  was  sincerely  grieved  to  part. 

Nourrit  wished  to  quit  the  stage  altogether, 
but  the  love  of  it  was  so  deep  in  him  that 
before  long  he  undertook  a  tour  through 
Belgium  and  the  French  provinces.  Every- 
where he  was  welcomed  cordially,  but  one 
night,  while  he  was  singing  in  Marseilles,  his 
voice,  probably  because  of  a  cold,  broke.  Com- 
pletely unnerved,  he  rushed  from  the  stage  and 
in  a  frenzy  tried  to  kill  himself.    His  friends 


68      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

managed  to  control  him,  but  it  was  evident  that 
his  fine,  sensitive  mind  had  become  perma- 
nently unbalanced. 

In  1838  he  was  sufficiently  recovered  to  go 
to  Naples,  where  he  undertook  to  alter  his 
method  of  singing  according  to  the  Italian 
taste.  He  also  wrote  the  book  and  Donizetti 
the  music  for  an  opera  in  which  he  himself 
was  to  sing,  but  the  performance  was,  for 
political  reasons,  prohibited  by  the  censor.  He 
made  a  few  appearances  in  some  of  his  old 
roles,  and  sang  as  well  as  ever  he  had,  but 
he  persuaded  himself  that  the  public  applauded 
him  only  to  deride  him.  One  night,  after  sing- 
ing at  a  charity  concert,  he  went  home  and 
either  fell  or  jumped  from  the  roof  of  his 
house.  Such  was  the  pitiable  end,  at  the  age 
of  thirty-seven,  of  one  of  the  most  versatile 
and  creative  of  all  operatic  tenors. 

Gilbert  Duprez,  the  involuntary  cause  of 
the  passing  of  Nourrit  and  his  successor  at  the 
Paris  Opera,  was  born  in  Paris  in  1806.  His 
father,  a  perfumer  by  trade,  was  a  poor  man, 
and  it  would  have  been  hard  for  the  boy  to 
get  an  education  if  he  had  not  early  attracted 
the  attention  of  Choron,  a  distinguished  musi- 
cal pedagog,  who  discovered  in  him  evidence 
of  a  real  musical  talent,  which  he  himself 
undertook  to  develop. 

Duprez's  first  attempts  to  win  recognition  as 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT   AND   DUPREZ  69 

a  singer  were,  like  Pasta's  and  Rubini's,  in- 
effectual. At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  sang  in 
the  chorus  at  a  performance  of  Racine's 
"Athalie,"  given  at  the  Theatre  Francais.  A 
visit  to  Italy  somewhat  later  brought  him  no 
renown  and  in  1825  he  returned  to  Paris, 
where  he  sang  through  a  season  at  the 
Odeon.  The  public  continued  apathetic  to  his 
efforts,  though  Choron  never  lost  faith  in  his 
pupil.  He  was  equally  inconspicuous  at  the 
Opera  Comique  in  1828.  About  this  time, 
despite  his  poverty,  he  took  unto  himself  a 
wife  with  a  voice  and  once  again  crossed  the 
Alps.  In  Milan  the  two  of  them  obtained  an 
engagement  for  four  months  for  the  sum  of 
$175  all  told. 

But  the  tide  was  about  to  turn.  Duprez's 
voice  and  dramatic  skill  were  expanding  rap- 
idly and  soon  enabled  him  to  make  a  brilliant 
tour  through  Italy.  For  a  time  he  was  Mali- 
bran's  leading  tenor  and  in  1835  Donizetti 
wrote  for  him  the  tenor  part  in  "Lucia."  Tales 
of  his  prowess  reached  Paris  and  in  April, 
1837,  less  than  a  month  after  Nourrit's  re- 
tirement, he  made  his  debut  at  the  Opera  in 
"William  Tell." 

It  is  not  surprising  that  he  did  not  win 
immediate  recognition  from  the  Parisians,  who 
were  accustomed  to  the  grace  and  finesse  of 
Nourrit.  Duprez's  stature  was  insignificant, 
his  features  plain,  almost  to  ugliness.    Besides, 


70      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

the  part  of  Arnold  had  been  written  to  fit 
Nourrit's  high  falsetto  and,  consequently,  was 
not  thoroughly  suited  to  Duprez's  more  ro- 
bust organ.  But,  all  the  same,  there  were  a 
spontaneity  and  a  fire  in  his  interpretation  that 
worked  in  his  favor,  so  that  even  the  most 
loyal  admirers  of  Nourrit  had  to  admit  that 
the  debut  was  a  promising  one. 

As  time  went  on  and  Duprez  was  heard  in 
other  operas,  the  Parisians  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  he  was  a  worthy  successor  to  their 
former  favorite.  His  Italian-trained  voice  was 
more  virile  in  quality  than  Nourrit's  and  in- 
cluded in  its  range  a  robust  high  C.  Where  he 
lacked  in  facility  he  gained  in  force.  Nourrit's 
style  had  been  polished  almost  to  the  point  of 
affectation ;  Duprez's  had  a  broader  and  more 
convincing  sweep.  Duprez  could  never  achieve 
the  air  of  elegance  for  which  Nourrit  had  been 
famous,  but  his  dramatic  instincts  were  so 
true  that,  as  in  Pasta's  case,  his  bodily  pres- 
ence seemed  to  increase  in  majesty  with  the 
crescendo  of  a  dramatic  situation.  In  mat- 
ters of  diction  the  two  men  were  equal. 

It  is  worth  recording  that  Henry  Chorley, 
an  admirable  critic,  who  heard  both  singers 
many  times,  considered  Duprez  the  most  sat- 
isfactory of  all  contemporary  tenors,  not  ex- 
cepting Rubini. 

For  ten  years  Duprez  was  the  dominating 
singer  at  the  Paris  Opera,  although  his  only 


RUBINI,    NOURRIT    AND   DUPREZ  Jl 

really  important  creation  during  that  period 
was  in  "La  Favorite,"  by  Donizetti.  His  rule 
was  so  absolute  that  Berlioz  himself  attacked 
him  in  print,  charging  him  (and  all  singers, 
for  that  matter)  with  being  unprogressive, 
even  reactionary.  But  his  prime  was  a  short 
one.  He  was  still  young  when  his  voice  began 
to  fail  him,  probably  for  the  same  reason  that 
Pasta's  had  failed  her  prematurely — a  too 
severe  discipline  of  a  naturally  refractory 
organ.  Before  he  was  forty-five  he  retired 
from  the  stage. 

He  had  already  had  some  success  as  a 
teacher,  and  to  teaching  and  the  composition 
of  music  of  no  especial  value  he  devoted  the 
remainder  of  his  days.  His  most  famous  pupil 
was  Madame  Miolan-Carvalho,  who  later  did 
so  much  to  illuminate  and  beautify  the  operas 
of  Gounod.  Duprez  published  two  treatises 
on  the  voice,  which,  like  most  attempts  to  de- 
fine the  art  of  singing  in  words,  accomplished 
but  little.    He  died  in  Paris  in  1896. 

Ruskin  tells  us  that  the  art  of  painting 
reached  its  perfection  in  the  Raphael  Rooms 
in  the  Vatican,  and  that,  following  the  uni- 
versal law  of  growth,  this  attainment  of  per- 
fection was  the  inception  of  decay.  As 
Raphael  was  the  perfect  painter,  so  Rubini 
was  the  perfect  singer — in  Rubini  mere  vocal- 
ism  attained  its  highest  possible  development. 


72      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Rubini  had  many  imitators,  but  as  none  of 
them  possessed  his  genius,  the  art  of  singing 
according  to  his  tradition  soon  tended  to  be- 
come mannered  and  lifeless.  Progress  could  be 
made  only  along  new  paths.  Nourrit  and  Du- 
prez,  though  inferior  to  Rubini  as  singers,  by 
means  of  their  versatility,  energy  and  creative 
power  succeeded  in  establishing  a  new  school 
of  operatic  art,  of  which  some  of  the  best 
features  culminated,  at  the  end  of  the  century, 
in  the  glorious  achievements  of  Jean  De 
Reszke  and  Victor  Maurel. 


Sontag  att&  Cin6 


HENRIETTE  SONTAG  (1806-1854) 
JENNY  LIND   fl820-1887) 


OST  of  the  world's  best  singers 
have  come  of  Latin  stock,  but  a 
few  have  belonged  to  the  Germanic 
race.  Of  these  daughters  o^  the 
North  none  are  more  deserving  of  remem- 
brance than  Henriette  Sontag,  a  German,  and 
Jenny  Lind,  a  Swede,  both  of  whom,  after 
many  triumphs  in  Europe,  made  extensive 
tours  through  the  United  States. 

Sontag  was  born  in  Coblentz,  on  the  Rhine, 
in  1806.  Both  of  her  parents  were  actors  and 
at  the  age  of  six  she  made  her  theatrical 
debut  at  the  Darmstadt  Theatre.  Her  musi- 
cal talent  declared  itself  early,  and  at  the  age 
of  eight  the  little  thing  is  said  to  have  sung 
the  great  air  of  "The  Queen  of  the  Night" 
for  the  delectation  of  her  parents'  guests.  In 
181 5  her  mother,  now  a  widow,  took  her  to 
Prague,  where  she  came  under  the  notice  of 
Weber,  and  where,  despite  the  fewness  of  her 
years,  she  was  accepted  as  a  student  in  the 
73 


74      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

conservatory.  She  made  rapid  progress,  and 
when  in  1821  she  was  unexpectedly  substituted 
for  the  prima  donna  in  Boieldieu's  "Jean  de 
Paris"  she  charmed  everybody  by  her  lovely 
voice,  her  sure  musicianship  and  her  girlish 
grace. 

Shortly  afterward  her  mother  took  her  to 
Vienna,  where  she  sang  for  four  years  in  both 
German  and  Italian  opera.  The  German 
method  of  singing  was  not  more  admirable 
in  those  days  than  it  is  now,  but  Sontag's 
voice  grew  constantly  in  beauty  and  her  op- 
eratic style  was  greatly  benefited  by  her  asso- 
ciation with  Fodor,  the  French  prima  donna. 
Weber  took  an  interest  in  her,  and  in  1823, 
though  she  was  still  only  a  slip  of  a  girl,  en- 
trusted her  with  the  soprano  role  in  his  new 
opera  "Euryanthe."  Beethoven,  too,  was  her 
devoted  admirer,  and  after  the  first  per- 
formance of  Weber's  opera,  from  which  he 
was  absent,  his  first  question  was,  "How  did 
little  Sontag  sing?"  A  year  later  he  selected 
her  to  sing  the  soprano  parts  in  the  first  per- 
formances of  the  Ninth  Symphony  and  the 
Mass  in  D. 

By  1825  she  had  sung  in  Berlin  and  Leip- 
sig,  as  well  as  in  a  number  of  the  smaller 
German  cities,  and  had  been  accepted  every- 
where as  a  singer  of  exceptional  quality.  The 
enthusiastic  populace  and  students  of  Got- 
tingen,  when  she  left  them,  threw  her  car- 


HENRIETTE   SONTAG 
1806-1854 


SONTAG   AND    LIND  /5 

riage  into  the  river,  declaring  that  nobody  was 
worthy  to  occupy  it  after  her. 

Her  growing  fame  had  already  crossed  the 
Rhine,  and  the  Parisians,  though  somewhat 
incredulous  as  to  the  possibility  of  any  good 
singing  of  German  provenance,  were  anxious 
to  hear  her.  In  1826  they  had  a  chance  to 
judge  her  merits  for  themselves.  She  made 
her  Parisian  debut  in  the  part  of  Rosina 
and  had  not  been  on  the  stage  five  minutes  be- 
fore her  audience  was  completely  captivated. 

Her  figure  was  slender  and  graceful,  her 
features  delicate,  her  eyes  large  and  expres- 
sive, her  hair  rather  blonde,  her  smile  bewitch- 
ing, her  hands  and  feet  perfection  itself. 
Nature  had  molded  her  expressly  to  play  the 
part  of  a  coquette.  Her  voice  was  a  lyric 
soprano  of  exquisite  charm  and  sweetness, 
encompassing  two  flawless  octaves  and  able 
to  execute  the  most  florid  passages  with 
delicious  facility.  In  vocal  fluency,  though 
not  in  power,  she  surpassed  even  Catalani. 
When  one  adds  to  these  qualifications  skill 
as  an  actress  and  a  musicianship  that  satis- 
fied Mendelssohn,  Berlioz,  Weber  and  Bee- 
thoven, it  is  not  surprising  that  the  Parisians 
approved  without  reserve  the  verdict  of  the 
Germans. 

In  parts  requiring  suavity,  tender  sentiment 
and  archness  of  expression  Sontag  was  ador- 
able ;  as  a  singer  of  Mozart's  lighter  roles  she 


j6      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

has  probably  never  been  equaled.  Her  phy- 
sique and  temperament  precluded  complete 
success  in  portraying  the  deeper  emotions,  al- 
though, as  she  matured  in  style,  she  added  to 
her  repertory  commendable  impersonations  of 
Desdemona  and  Donna  Anna. 

In  1828  London  heard  her  for  the  first 
time  and  capitulated  at  once.  A  few  months 
later  she  was  again  in  Paris  battling  with 
Malibran  for  the  crown  of  Queen  of  Song. 
The  Spaniard  was  all  fire  and  passion,  the 
German  mistress  of  a  serene  and  perfect  art. 
The  question  of  supremacy  could  of  course 
never  be  settled,  because  it  was  one  of  kind, 
not  of  degree,  but  the  rivalry  was  none  the 
less  intense,  even  acrimonious,  for  a  time. 
Finally  some  tactful  person  persuaded  the  two 
prima  donnas,  who  were  performing  on  the 
same  programme  at  a  private  concert  in 
London,  to  commingle  their  voices  in  a  duo 
from  "Semiramide."  The  result  of  the  com- 
bination was  so  happy  that  Spain  and  Ger- 
many declared  peace  on  the  spot  and  sealed 
the  treaty  with  a  kiss.  This  was  the  first  of  their 
many  joint  appearances  in  opera  and  concert. 
In  1829  Malibran,  Sontag  and  Damoreau,  join- 
ing forces  for  a  benefit  performance  at  the 
Paris  Opera,  brought  the  receipts  to  the  as- 
tonishing total  of  $27,000. 

As  a  captivator  of  the  hearts  of  men  Son- 
tag  was  irresistible;  Germans,  French,  Eng- 


SONTAG   AND   LIND  JJ 

lish,  she  enslaved  them  all.  An  English  diplo- 
mat in  Berlin  was  known  as  Lord  Montag, 
because  Montag  always  follows  Sontag.  In 
1826  the  aged  but  still  susceptible  Goethe 
wrote,  "I  would  gladly  sit  to-day  and  all  day 
to  hear  her.  Her  talent  has  more  confused 
than  comforted  me.  The  good  that  passes  by 
without  returning  leaves  behind  it  a  vacuum." 

Offers  of  matrimony  were  of  almost  daily 
occurrence,  but  to  all  her  wooers  the  enchan- 
tress said  a  kindly  "no."  It  was  thought  that 
her  heart  was  impregnable,  but  early  in  1830 
her  recent  secret  marriage  to  Count  Rossi,  a 
young  Italian  diplomat,  was  announced.  Of 
course  she  had  to  give  up  the  stage  and,  in 
order  that  her  humble  birth  might  not  jeopard 
her  husband's  career,  the  King  of  Prussia 
bestowed  on  her  a  patent  of  nobility.  After 
a  few  farewell  performances  she  retired,  ap- 
parently forever. 

For  nearly  twenty  years  the  Countess 
Rossi  led  the  mundane  life  of  a  diplomat's 
wife,  accompanying  her  husband  to  Holland, 
Germany  and  Russia,  where  he  was  succes- 
sively accredited.  Her  innate  gentility  enabled 
her  to  grace  her  new  position  as  it  had 
enabled  her  to  grace  the  stage.  Occasionally 
she  sang  in  public  for  charity,  and  it  was 
noticed  that  her  lovely  art  had  in  no  way 
deteriorated.  Her  domestic  life  was  thor- 
oughly happy  and  it  is  probable  that  Europe 


?8      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

would  never  have  heard  her  in  opera  again 
and  that  America  would  never  have  heard  her 
at  all,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  revolutionary 
movement  of  1848. 

Jenny  Lind's  retirement  from  the  operatic 
stage  in  1849  ^elt  a  v°id  in  London  that 
Lumley,  the  manager  of  Her  Majesty's  The- 
atre, felt  should  be  filled  at  once.  The  social 
disorders  of  the  previous  year  had  played 
havoc  with  Count  Rossi's  finances,  so  that 
when  Lumley  made  the  countess  an  offer  of 
$30,000  for  a  six  months'  season,  she  decided 
to  accept  it,  though  it  necessitated  her  hus- 
band's retirement  from  diplomacy. 

Great  was  the  interest  of  the  public  in  the 
return  of  the  famous  singer  after  so  many 
years  of  absence,  and  great  was  its  delight  to 
find  that,  although  the  voice  had  lost  a  little 
of  its  bloom,  their  former  idol  was  the  same 
exquisite  artist  as  of  old.  Time  had  dealt 
kindly  too  with  her  beauty  and  added  only 
a  little  plumpness  to  her  girlish  figure. 

She  made  her  rentree  in  "Linda  di 
Chamonix,"  following  it  with  several  operas 
from  her  old  repertory.  All  went  well  and 
before  long  she  was  winning  new  laurels  in 
"Don  Pasquale,"  "I  Puritani"  and  "La  Figlia 
del  Reggimento,"  all  of  which  had  been  writ- 
ten since  her  retirement  twenty  years  before. 
After  England  Paris  and  Germany  welcomed 
her  back  into  their  hearts. 


SONTAG    AND    LIND  79 

In  1852  she  was  called  upon  again  to  follow 
in  the  wake  of  Jenny  Lind.  The  Swedish 
soprano,  after  two  remunerative  years  in  the 
United  States,  sailed  homeward  from  New 
York,  never  to  return.  Some  American  man- 
agers, feeling  that  a  singer  of  Sontag's  reputa- 
tion could  make  a  profitable  tour  through  the 
territory  just  covered  by  Lind,  engaged  the 
German  prima  donna  for  a  long  season  of 
concert  and  opera. 

Sontag  landed  in  New  York  in  September, 
1852.  On  the  night  of  her  arrival  she  was 
given  a  public  serenade,  according  to  the  best 
Barnum-Lind  traditions,  but  the  affair  lacked 
the  strong  guiding  hand  of  Barnum  and 
quickly  degenerated  into  a  street  riot,  some- 
thing on  the  order  of  the  second  act  of 
"Meistersinger."  Sontag  was  so  upset  by  the 
uproar  and  excitement  that  she  took  to  her 
bed  and  had  to  postpone  her  first  concert  for 
a  week  or  two. 

The  attempt  to  tread  in  the  footsteps  of  the 
triumphant  Swede  might  easily  have  resulted 
in  a  disastrous  anti-climax;  besides,  Alboni, 
whose  opulent  voice  and  genial  temperament 
always  made  a  strong  popular  appeal,  arrived 
in  New  York  about  the  same  time  as  Sontag. 
But,  despite  these  adverse  circumstances  and 
uncertain  health,  Sontag  was  accepted  at  once 
by  the  public  at  her  real  value.  She  made 
her  American  debut  September  27,  1852,  in 


80      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Metropolitan  Hall,  a  fine  new  concert  audi- 
torium, situated  on  Broadway,  opposite  Bond 
Street,  which  had  recently  been  inaugurated 
by  Lind.  Later  she  appeared  in  several  of 
her  favorite  operas  at  Niblo's  Theatre,  and 
although  Alboni's  simultaneous  appearances 
with  another  company  must  have  divided  a 
public  at  best  none  too  numerous,  her  affairs 
continued  to  prosper. 

From  New  York  she  made  a  number  of  vis- 
its to-  the  nearer  large  cities  and  then  left  for  the 
West  and  South.  Conditions  of  travel  in  our 
country  were  the  reverse  of  luxurious  sixty 
years  ago  and  must  have  been  especially  tax- 
ing to  a  woman  as  delicately  constituted  as 
Sontag,  who  for  so  many  years  had  led  a 
life  of  ease.  But  the  little  woman  was  de- 
termined to  restore  the  family  fortunes  and 
continued  her  tour  month  after  month.  She 
was  offered  an  engagement  in  Mexico  that 
promised  to  be  highly  remunerative.  She 
knew  there  was  danger  in  accepting,  because 
of  the  widespread  prevalence  of  cholera,  but 
would  not  listen  to  the  voice  of  prudence  and 
in  the  spring  of  1854  set  sail  from  New  Or- 
leans with  her  husband.  Her  engagement 
opened  auspiciously,  but  soon  after  her  ar- 
rival she  was  struck  down  by  the  disease  and 
died  in  Mexico  City  on  the  17th  of  June. 

Jenny  Lind  was  born  of  humble  parentage 


SONTAG   AND    LIND  OI 

in  Stockholm  in  1820.  She  began  to  sing  al- 
most as  soon  as  she  could  speak  and  at  nine 
years  of  age  was  admitted  to  the  singing 
school  connected  with  the  Court  Theatre.  At 
ten  she  was  singing  children's  parts  in  public 
and  at  eighteen  made  her  debut  as  Agathe  in 
"Der  Freischutz."  Her  performance  was  so 
good  that  she  soon  became  a  regular  member 
of  the  company,  singing  leading  roles  in  such 
operas  as  "Euryanthe,"  "Robert  le  Diable" 
and  "La  Vestale"  (Spontini).  In  all  she  at- 
tempted she  acquitted  herself  well  and  was 
assured  of  an  honorable  career  in  her  native 
city,  but  she  was  ambitious  and  perceived  that, 
if  she  was  ever  to  become  a  great  artist,  she 
needed  a  schooling  much  more  comprehensive 
than  any  she  could  find  in  Stockholm.  She 
was  already  a  good  pianist  and  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  all  the  standard  operas,  ora- 
torios and  songs,  but  of  the  art  of  bel  canto 
she  knew  but  little. 

So  in  1841,  after  three  years  as  prima 
donna,  she  resigned  her  position  and  went  to 
Paris  to  study  singing  with  Manuel  Garcia. 
He  told  her  that  her  voice  had  been  sorely 
fatigued,  possibly  permanently  injured,  by 
reason  of  her  ignorance  of  right  methods  and 
would  accept  her  as  a  pupil  only  after  she 
had  taken  several  weeks  of  complete  rest. 
With  characteristic  energy  and  intelligence  she 
worked  with  Garcia  for  nearly  a  year,  at  the 


82      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

same  time  availing  herself  of  the  many  oppor- 
tunities of  hearing  the  wonderful  singers, 
both  French  and  Italian,  who  at  just  that  time 
abounded  in  Paris.  The  results  of  this  year 
of  study  were  so  substantial  that  Meyerbeer, 
struck  by  her  talent,  arranged  an  audition  for 
her  at  the  Opera.  A  number  of  musical 
celebrities  were  there  to  listen  to  her,  but  the 
manager  himself  failed  to  put  in  an  appear- 
ance and  the  hearing  came  to  nothing.  For 
this  discourtesy  Lind  bore  Paris  a  grudge  till 
the  end  of  her  days  and  never  again,  even 
when  she  was  asked  to  write  her  own  con- 
tract, would  she  consent  to  sing  there. 

She  now  returned  to  Stockholm,  where  dur- 
ing the  next  two  years  she  was  again  a  mem- 
ber of  the  opera  company.  Her  art  was 
growing  rapidly,  and  when  in  December, 
1844,  through  Meyerbeer's  influence,  she  was 
given  a  chance  to  sing  "Norma"  in  Berlin, 
she  achieved  an  unqualified  success.  She 
followed  this  up  with  performances  of  other 
roles  and  then  made  a  tour  of  some  of  the 
principal  German  cities,  including  Leipzig, 
where  she  made  Mendelssohn's  acquaintance. 

Her  fame  by  now  had  penetrated  as  far  as 
England  and  caused  Bunn,  an  English  im- 
presario, to  make  her  a  tempting  offer  to  sing 
in  London  under  his  management.  She  ac- 
cepted his  terms  and  signed  the  contract. 
The  signature  was  hardly  dry  when  Lumley, 


SONTAG    AND    LIND  83 

another  English  manager,  persuaded  her  to 
sign  a  contract  with  him.  Whatever  the 
rights  of  the  question,  the  struggle  between 
Bunn  and  Lumley  for  the  honor  of  presenting 
"the  Swedish  nightingale"  to  the  British  pub- 
lic, furnished  most  wonderful  advance  ad- 
vertising for  the  songbird.  Such  lawsuits, 
charges  and  recriminations,  such  backing  and 
filling,  all  duly  reported  in  the  newspapers, 
never  before  or  since  have  covered  the  pages 
of  musical  history.  Incidentally,  all  England 
became  acquainted  with  every  detail  of  Lind's 
private  and  public  life,  her  virtues,  her  gen- 
erosity, her  voice,  her  musicianship — nothing 
was  left  untold.  The  curiosity  of  the  public 
in  regard  to  her  grew  to  white  heat.  Finally, 
the  courts  awarded  to  Bunn  a  forfeit  of  $12,500 
and  on  May  4,  1847,  under  Lumley's  manage- 
ment, Jenny  Lind  made  her  London  debut  at 
Her  Majesty's  Theatre  as  Alice  in  "Robert  le 
Diable." 

Every  inch  of  space  in  the  auditorium  was 
occupied;  every  opera  enthusiast  in  London 
was  there  burning  with  expectancy.  At  first 
Lind  was  a  little  unsteady,  but  she  soon  gained 
confidence  and  sang  her  first  air  in  her  best 
style.  The  last  note  had  not  ceased  when  a 
mighty  "Br aval"  emitted  from  the  throat  of 
Lablache  himself,  who  was  in  a  box,  gave  the 
signal  for  a  pandemonium  of  applause.  From 
that  moment  till  the  end  of  her  life  Jenny 


84      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Lind  was  the  idol  of  the  English  public,  its 
incomparable  singer,  its  standard  of  all 
womanly  virtues.  In  opera  or  concert  the 
story  was  always  the  same;  the  fever  of  ap- 
probation never  cooled.  Those  that  could  not 
afford  to  enter  the  theatre  stood  for  hours  by 
the  stage  door  just  to  see  her  pass.  Royalty 
petted  her,  the  populace  adored  her. 

Her  operatic  career  in  London  covered  just 
two  years,  during  which  she  appeared  in  many 
parts.  Early  in  1849,  although  she  was  not 
yet  thirty  and  the  future  seemed  to  promise 
her  a  long  vista  of  triumphs,  she  announced 
her  approaching  retirement  from  the  operatic 
stage.  Her  last  appearance  on  any  operatic 
stage  took  place  May  10,  1849,  in  "Robert  le 
Diable." 

The  reasons  for  her  early  retirement  from 
opera  have  been  much  discussed,  but  never 
clearly  established.  They  are  probably  to  be 
found  in  certain  temperamental  peculiarities 
which  I  shall  touch  upon  presently. 

Jenny  Lind's  voice  was  a  soprano  of  wide 
compass,  a  little  husky  and  sometimes  untune- 
ful  in  the  lower  part,  but  increasing  in  power 
and  beauty  as  it  ascended.  Her  breath-control 
was  exemplary.  Her  own  intelligence  and 
industry,  supplemented  by  the  excellent  in- 
struction received  from  Garcia,  made  her  so 
completely  mistress  of  her  voice  that  even  the 
most    difficult    technical    feats    seemed    well 


JENNY   T.IXD 
1820-1887 


SONTAG   AND    LIND  85 

within  her  powers.  Her  musicianship  was 
above  criticism,  her  artistic  ideals  of  the 
highest. 

Her  appearance  was  in  no  way  striking. 
Her  eyes  were,  perhaps,  her  best  feature  and 
imparted,  especially  when  she  was  singing,  a 
pleasing  expression  to  her  plain  features. 

In  physical  gifts  she  was,  therefore,  not 
above  the  level  of  a  number  of  other  female 
singers,  but  in  temperament  she  differed  so 
widely  from  all  as  to  place  her  in  a  class 
apart.  Compared  with  such  singers  as  Pasta 
and  Malibran  her  singing  might  be  called  cold, 
but  through  this  same  coolness  of  style  there 
seemed  to  pierce  a  mystic  flame  that  was 
quite  as  emotional  in  its  effect  on  her  audi- 
ences as  the  most  glowing  Latin  fervor. 
There  was  in  her  something  of  the  moral  in- 
tensity that  one  discovers  in  the  writings  of 
her  compatriot  Swedenborg.  Like  Nourrit, 
she  felt  herself  to  be  a  priestess  in  the  ser- 
vice of  her  art  and  spared  no  pains  to  make 
her  service  perfect.  This  determination  to 
give  out  only  her  best  resulted  often  in  ap- 
parent self-consciousness  and  over-emphasis. 
Further,  she  was  always  so  intensely  herself 
that  she  had  no  capacity  to  enter  into  an  op- 
eratic part  of  which  the  general  character  was 
not  in  harmony  with  her  own  nature.  With 
her  keenness  at  self -analysis  she  must  have 
recognized    this    deficiency    and    have    been 


86      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

anxious  to  abandon  dramatic  singing  before 
the  public  should  perceive  for  themselves  her 
unfitness  for  it.  Whatever  the  real  cause  of 
her  retirement — and  I  offer  here  one  that  is, 
perhaps,  not  much  more  plausible  than  a 
number  of  others — Jenny  Lind  after  1849 
was  heard  in  concert  only. 

The  next  chapter  in  the  life  of  our  prima 
donna  brings  her  to  our  own  shores  for  the 
most  sensational  and  triumphal  concert  tour 
ever  made  by  anybody.  Enter  Phineas  T. 
Barnum,  the  world's  greatest  showman,  past 
or  present.  (The  entrance  of  Barnum  neces- 
sitates the  free  use  of  superlatives!)  He  was 
now  in  the  prime  of  life,  keen-witted,  re- 
sourceful and  ambitious.  He  had  already 
made  a  tidy  sum  exhibiting  Heth  Joyce,  a  161- 
year-old  ( ?)  negress,  who  swore  she  had 
been  the  mammy  of  George  Washington  him- 
self, and  a  small  fortune  out  of  General  Tom 
Thumb.  Now,  looking  about  him  for  new 
wonders  to  show,  he  bethought  him  of  Jenny 
Lind,  whom  he  had  never  heard,  but  whose 
renown  had  reached  even  his  unmusical  ears. 
He  also  had  heard  of  the  purity  of  her  pri- 
vate life,  of  her  piety  and  of  the  extraordinary 
generosity  with  which  she  had  always  shared 
her  prosperity  with  her  less  fortunate  fellow- 
creatures.  Barnum  himself  says  that  had  it 
not  been  for  her  virtues,  especially  her  gen- 
erosity, he  never  would  have  brought  her  to 


SONTAG   AND    LIND  87 

America,  and  that  his  experience  as  a  show- 
man persuaded  him  that  her  voice  and  virtues 
in  combination  would  prove  a  gold  mine  for 
all  concerned.     And  he  was  right. 

The  contract  was  signed  in  England  early  in 
1850.  It  called  for  a  maximum  of  150  con- 
certs and  guaranteed  to  the  singer  $1,000  a 
concert,  plus  one-half  the  receipts  in  excess 
of  $5,500.  To  the  singer  was  granted  the 
right  to  sing  for  charity,  when  she  wished. 
Barnum  undertook  to  provide  a  musical  con- 
ductor, Julius  Benedict,  a  baritone  singer, 
Belletti,  both  selected  by  Lind,  and  such  other 
musicians  as  should  be  required  on  tour.  All 
the  expenses  of  advertising,  travel,  etc.,  were 
assumed  by  Barnum. 

In  1850  the  great  American  public  knew 
little  about  musical  doings  in  Europe  and  six 
months  before  the  arrival  of  Jenny  Lind  even 
her  name  was  almost  unknown.  But  Barnum 
had  learned  how  to  reach  the  public  through 
the  newspapers  and  at  once  inaugurated  a 
campaign  of  education  that  soon  familiarized 
the  entire  country  not  only  with  the  Swedish 
singer's  name,  but  also  with  every  detail  of 
her  life  from  her  birth  to  the  present  moment, 
her  musical  gifts  and  her  love  of  giving. 

When  she  arrived  in  New  York  early  in 
September,  1850,  she  was  certainly  the  best 
advertised  woman  in  America  and  every- 
body was  on  the  qui  vive  to  see  and  hear  her. 


88      SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Crowds  were  at  the  dock  to  meet  her,  although 
it  was  already  night.  Banners  of  welcome 
were  displayed  everywhere,  and  when  she 
finally  reached  her  hotel  about  midnight  she 
was  greeted  by  a  band  of  130  pieces,  preceded 
by  700  firemen — everything  prearranged  by 
the  ingenious  impresario.  Publicity  continued 
to  be  the  watchword  day  and  night.  Every- 
where that  Jenny  went  the  crowds  and  the  re- 
porters were  sure  to  go.  It  is  surprising  that 
she  did  not  resent  this  constant  intrusion 
on  her  privacy,  but,  so  far  as  we  can  judge, 
she  seems  to  have  adapted  herself  easily  and 
without  apparent  annoyance  to  her  circum- 
stances. 

Her  first  concert  took  place  September  11, 
1850,  in  Castle  Garden  (now  the  Aquarium). 
The  best  seats  cost  nominally  three  dollars, 
though  the  right  of  choice  was  sold  at  auc- 
tion. The  first  seat  had  gone  to  one  Genin, 
a  hatter,  who  paid  a  premium  of  $225,  which 
soon  came  back  into  his  pocket  through  the 
sale  of  hundreds  of  "Jenny  Lind"  hats.  When 
the  overture  began  there  were  said  to  be  7,000 
people  in  the  house.  There  was  an  excellent 
orchestra  of  sixty  under  the  leadership  of 
Benedict;  also  Belletti,  the  baritone,  and 
Richard  Hofmann,  a  young  English  pianist, 
who  afterward  settled  in  New  York  as  a 
teacher  of  piano  and  died  there  only  a  few 
years  ago. 


SONTAG   AND   LIND  89 

But  the  audience  had  ears  only  for  Jenny 
Lind.  Her  share  of  the  programme  consisted 
of  "Casta  Diva,"  a  duet  with  baritone,  a  trio 
by  Meyerbeer  for  two  flutes  and  voice,  an 
echo  song  (in  which  she  performed  some  as- 
tonishing vocal  feats  bordering  on  ventrilo- 
quism) and  some  Swedish  melodies.  She 
sang  also  a  "greeting  to  America,"  the  words 
of  which  had  been  written  by  Bayard  Taylor 
in  competition  for  a  prize  of  two  hundred 
dollars  offered  by  Barnum  and  set  to  music 
by  Benedict.  The  audience  applauded  rap- 
turously everything  the  singer  did  and  also 
called  out  the  seemingly  reluctant  Barnum, 
who  announced  that  the  prima  donna  had  de- 
termined to  divide  her  share  of  the  evening's 
profits,  $10,000,  among  a  number  of  local 
charities.    The  total  receipts  came  to  $26,000. 

New  York  was  now  more  than  ever  "Jenny 
Lind"  mad.  During  the  next  few  months  she 
gave  no  less  than  thirty-five  concerts  in  the 
city.  She  also  made  a  long  tour  that  carried 
her  to  all  the  large  cities  east  of  the  Missis- 
sippi and  even  to  Havana.  Her  reception  was 
the  same  everywhere,  except  in  Havana,  where 
the  taste  was  all  for  Italian  opera.  Richmond, 
Virginia,  with  only  a  few  thousand  inhabitants, 
gave  her  a  $13,000  house.  Everywhere  she 
went  she  gave  away  liberal  sums  in  charity. 
In  nine  months  she  appeared  in  ninety-three 
concerts,  the  total  receipts  of  which  were,  ac- 


90      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

cording  to  Barnum,  $700,000,  of  which  her 
net  share  was  $175,000.  The  gross  balance 
went  to  Barnum. 

In  June,  185 1,  Lind  decided,  for  reasons 
not  altogether  clear,  to  leave  Barnum's  man- 
agement and,  in  accordance  with  a  clause  in 
her  contract,  obtained  her  release  from  him 
on  payment  of  a  forfeit  of  $30,000.  She  was 
now  her  own  manager  and  continued  her 
touring  for  another  year  with  unabated  suc- 
cess. 

It  is  a  pity  that  no  competent  writer  ever 
undertook  to  describe  the  many  interesting 
and  amusing  adventures  of  these  two  wander- 
years.  The  few  sketches  that  have  come  down 
to  us  make  us  long  for  something  more  de- 
tailed and  complete.  Benedict,  for  instance, 
used  to  tell  how  in  remote  parts  of  the  coun- 
try the  troupe  would  follow  a  water-course 
by  steamer.  When  they  came  to  a  town  of 
sufficient  size,  they  would  disembark  and  send 
through  the  streets  men  bearing  banners  an- 
nouncing the  arrival  of  the  world-famous 
Jenny  Lind,  who  would  within  a  few  hours 
give  a  concert  in  the  principal  hall  of  the 
place.  There  would  be  an  auction  sale  of 
tickets,  the  musicians  would  arrive  at  the  hall, 
bringing  the  pianoforte  with  them.  The  con- 
cert would  be  given  and  an  hour  afterward 
all  hands  would  be  sailing  down  stream  again 
bound  for  the  next  port. 


SONTAG   AND    LIND  91 

In  1852  she  was  married  in  Boston  to  Otto 
Goldschmidt,  the  successor  to  Benedict  in  her 
concert  company.  She  was  a  Protestant,  and 
he  a  Jew,  as  were  many  of  her  most  helpful 
friends,  including  Mendelssohn,  Meyerbeer, 
Moscheles,  Lumley  and  Benedict.  The  mar- 
riage was  a  happy  one. 

In  1852  she  returned  to  Europe,  where,  it 
is  said,  she  distributed  all  the  profits  of  her 
American  tour  in  charity.  From  1852  to 
1855  she  lived  in  Dresden  and  then  removed 
to  England,  where  she  made  her  permanent 
home.  She  continued  to  sing  in  concert,  but 
her  appearances  became  gradually  less  fre- 
quent and  ceased  altogether  in  1883.  Sur- 
rounded by  her  growing  family,  she  lived  a 
full  and  happy  life,  devoted  to  the  good  of 
others  and  to  the  art  she  had  served  so  nobly. 
She  died  at  Malvern,  England,  in  1887. 

To  make  a  just  estimate  of  Jenny  Lind's 
worth  as  a  singer  is  difficult.  Though  the 
most  described  of  all  the  great  prima  donnas, 
her  exalted  reputation  is  the  hardest  to  ex- 
plain. In  voice  and  in  dramatic  talent  she 
was  certainly  inferior  to  her  contemporaries 
Sontag  and  Grisi ;  she  was  supreme  only  as  a 
concert  performer.  Cool,  expert  criticism  was 
never  applied  to  her  by  the  general  public. 
Her  early  successes  in  Sweden  and  Germany 
mean  little,  because  of  the  low  standards  of 
singing    in    those    countries.      England    and 


92      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

America  never  heard  her  till  their  critical 
faculties  had  been  numbed  by  the  blast  of 
advance  advertising  that,  in  both  cases,  pre- 
ceded her  coming.  The  Parisian  public,  the 
most  knowing  and  sophisticated  of  all,  never 
heard  her  sing  a  note.  She  was  only  thirty- 
five  when  she  ceased  to  sing  regularly  and 
resolved  herself  into  a  glorious  tradition  above 
the  reach  of  adverse  criticism;  after  that  her 
infrequent  appearances  took  place  only  before 
the  English,  the  most  unquestioningly  loyal  of 
all  publics. 

And  yet  the  praise  she  won  from  such  musi- 
cians as  Meyerbeer,  Berlioz,  Robert  and  Clara 
Schumann,  and  Mendelssohn  warns  us  that  it 
is  not  safe  to  apply  to  her  the  word  "over- 
rated." Mendelssohn  wrote  the  soprano  part 
in  "Elijah"  for  her  and  said,  "In  my  whole 
life  I  have  not  seen  an  artistic  nature  so 
noble,  so  genuine,  so  true;  natural  gifts,  study 
and  depth  of  feeling  I  have  never  seen  united 
in  the  same  degree."  This  is  certainly  high 
praise  from  a  high  source.  Our  own  Theo- 
dore Thomas,  too,  always  maintained  that  of 
all  the  great  singers  that  sang  in  America 
during  his  long  lifetime,  and  he  heard  them 
all,  Sontag  and  Lind  were  certainly  the  great- 
est. 

Sontag  won  her  victories  by  obvious  means 
— a  lovely  voice  and  person,  combined  with 
a  highly  developed,  exquisite  art.    Jenny  Lind, 


SONTAG   AND   LIND  93 

on  the  contrary,  gained  hers  by  means  so  little 
obvious  that  we,  who  never  heard  her,  cannot 
quite  account  for  the  tremendous  impression 
she  made  on  her  own  generation.  The 
careers  of  the  other  great  prima  donnas 
can  be  explained  and  classified ;  Jenny  Lind's 
puzzles  the  imagination  and  assigns  to  "the 
Swedish  nightingale"  a  unique  place  in  the 
Golden  Book  of  Singers. 


(Brisi,  Mlario  anb 
^amburini 


GIULIA  GRISI  (1811-1869) 

MARIO  DE  CANDIA  (1810-1883) 

ANTONIO  TAMBURINI  (1800-1876) 


N  THE  previous  chapters  I  have 
tried  to  revive  the  careers  of  some 
of  the  stars  in  the  great  constella- 
tion of  singers  that  made  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century  especially 
memorable  in  operatic  history.  All  of  these 
artists,  except  Nourrit  and,  possibly,  Pauline 
Garcia,  owed  their  fame  in  greater  part  to 
their  interpretations  of  the  operas  of  Rossini, 
Bellini  and  Donizetti.  Rossini,  whose  first  im- 
portant opera,  "Tancredi"  (1813),  marks  the 
passing  of  the  old-style  Italian  opera  and  the 
inception  of  the  modern,  produced  his  last 
opera,  "Guillaume  Tell,"  in  1829;  Bellini's 
last,  "I  Puritani,"  was  first  given  in  1835; 
the  last  of  Donizetti's  sixty-three  operas  had 
its  first  performance  in  1844.  The  first  of 
these  dates,  1813,  is  coincident  with  that  of 
Garcia's  first  meeting  with  Rossini ;  the  last, 
1844,  marks  also  the  final  retirement  of 
Rubini. 

94 


GRISI,    MARIO    AND   TAMBURINI  95 

For  reasons  that  cannot  be  gone  into  here, 
the  popularity  of  the  operas  of  this  school 
began  to  wane  almost  as  soon  as  the  singers 
for  whom  they  had  been  written  retired  from 
active  service.  Most  of  them  are  now  quite 
dead  and  forgotten.  Of  Bellini's,  not  one  sur- 
vives ;  of  Donizetti's,  "Lucia,"  "Don  Pas- 
quale,"  "La  Favorita"  and,  perhaps,  one  or 
two  others  are  occasionally  resuscitated  for 
a  few  performances,  and  found  increasingly 
old-fashioned  and  decrepit;  of  the  whole 
school  there  is  only  one,  Rossini's  "Barbiere" 
(1816),  whose  still  youthful  vigor  seems  to 
promise  immortality. 

In  1854,  when  Grisi  and  Mario  visited  the 
United  States,  they  were  practically  the  only 
survivors  of  the  famous  "Old  Guard,"  which 
for  more  than  twenty  years  had  been  the  de- 
light of  Western  Europe.  Through  death  or 
voluntary  retirement,  Catalani,  Pasta,  Mali- 
bran,  Sontag,  Garcia,  Rubini,  Nourrit  and 
Duprez  were  completely  silent;  Lablache  and 
Tamburini,  although  occasionally  to  be  heard, 
were  all  but  superannuated;  Jenny  Lind  had 
left  the  operatic  stage  for  good  and  all,  in 
order  to  devote  herself  to  concert  singing; 
Pauline  Garcia  was  focussing  all  her  talents 
on  the  interpretation  of  Meyerbeer  and  Gliick. 

So  it  is  fitting  that  we  should  bring  this  se- 
ries of  biographical  sketches  to  a  close  with 
brief    studies    of    the   careers   of    Grisi    and 


96      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Mario,  adding  thereto  a  few  paragraphs  on 
Tamburini,  their  colleague,  who,  after  La- 
blache,  was  the  greatest  bass  of  the  period. 

Giulia  Grisi  was  born  in  Milan  in  181 1. 
Her  father  was  a  military  engineer,  who  had 
served  under  the  great  Napoleon.  Her 
mother  had,  in  all  probability,  been  a  singer 
before  her  marriage,  and  her  mother's  sister, 
Josefina  Grassini  ( 1 773-1850),  was  one  of  the 
best  singers  of  her  day.  Giulia's  older  sister, 
Guiditta,  too,  was  a  singer  of  some  repute; 
her  cousin  Carlotta  a  celebrated  dancer.  With 
such  a  professional  atmosphere  about  her,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  she,  with  an  excellent 
natural  voice  and  dramatic  instincts,  should 
have  heard  and  accepted  the  call  of  the  stage. 

She  studied  under  various  masters,  includ- 
ing her  sister,  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen 
made  her  debut  in  Rossini's  "Zelmira."  De- 
spite her  youth  and  inexperience,  her  voice, 
beauty  and  innate  aptitude  for  the  career  won 
for  her  the  applause,  not  only  of  the  public, 
but  also  of  Rossini  himself,  who  predicted  for 
her  a  brilliant  future.  Bellini,  too,  was  so  fa- 
vorably impressed  by  her  performance  that  he 
wrote  for  her  the  part  of  Adalgisa  in 
"Norma,"  which  she  had  the  honor  of  singing 
in  the  company  with  Pasta,  the  first  Norma. 

Grisi's  success  brought  her  engagements  in 
other  cities,  and  all  Italy  was  soon  open  to  her, 


GIULIA   GRISI 
1811-1869 


GRISI,    MARIO    AND   TAMBURINI  97 

but  at  this  point  she  took  a  step  which,  seem- 
ingly rash,  proved  in  the  event  to  be  most 
beneficial  to  her  career.  Before  she  could 
realize  that  wealth  and  fame  were  already 
within  her  reach,  she  had  signed  with  a  per- 
spicacious manager  a  contract  for  several 
years,  on  terms  sufficiently  liberal  to  satisfy 
an  untried  debutante,  but  quite  dispropor- 
tionate to  the  important  position  that  she 
soon  began  to  occupy  in  the  operatic  world. 
She  tried  to  release  herself  from  this  contract, 
and  when  the  manager  undertook  to  hold  her 
to  the  letter  of  her  bond,  escaped  across  the 
frontier  and  posted  to  Paris.  Never  again 
did  she  sing  in  Italy. 

Her  aunt  Grassini  and  her  sister  Giuditta 
were  in  the  French  capital  just  then,  and,  what 
was  even  more  fortunate,  Rossini,  who  gave 
her  at  once  the  chance  to  sing  the  title  role 
in  "Semiramide"  at  the  Theatre  des  Italiens. 
The  debut  was  completely  successful,  and 
from  that  year,  1832,  till  1849,  without  a  break, 
Grisi  sang  every  winter  in  the  same  theatre. 

London  heard  her  first  in  1834  in  "La 
Gazza  Ladra,"  and  found  her  to  its  liking;  a 
little  later,  when  she  sang  Anna  Bolena,  one 
of  Pasta's  best  parts,  it  proclaimed  her  a  dra- 
matic singer  of  the  first  order.  From  1834 
till  1861,  excepting  only  1842,  she  was  en- 
gaged every  season  as  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Italian  Opera. 


98      SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

In  1835  Grisi  was  one  of  the  famous  quar- 
tet for  whom  Bellini  had  written  "I  Puritani," 
and  showed  herself  worthy  to  be  associated 
with  her  celebrated  colleagues.  In  the  follow- 
ing year  she  married  a  Frenchman,  from 
whom  she  was  divorced  after  a  brief  and  un- 
happy union. 

Grisi's  voice  was  a  clear,  sonorous  soprano, 
homogeneous  throughout  and  under  excellent 
control.  It  was  somewhat  lacking  in  sym- 
pathy, but  splendidly  effective  in  dramatic 
scenes.  Her  musical  taste  was  good  and  en- 
tirely free  from  trickery  and  affectation.  She 
was  a  resourceful  and  spirited  actress  in  both 
comedy  and  tragedy,  but  unquestionably  at  her 
best  in  such  dramatic  parts  as  Norma  and 
Lucrezia  Borgia.  It  was  said  that  she  owed 
much  to  her  early  association  with  Pasta,  of 
whose  art  she  was  a  reverent  admirer.  She 
was  short  in  stature,  but  was  well  propor- 
tioned and  carried  her  handsome  head  so  nobly 
on  her  shoulders  that  she  gave  the  impression 
of  being  much  taller  than  she  really  was. 
Taken  all  in  all,  she  was  richly  equipped  for 
her  long  and  resplendent  career.  Heinrich 
Heine,  who  heard  her  in  Paris  in  1840,  called 
her  "a  rose  among  nightingales,  a  nightingale 
among  roses." 

Grisi  and  Mario  first  met  in  London  in 
1839  as  members  of  the  Italian  Opera, 
and  each  recognized  at  once  in  the  other  a 


GRISI,    MARIO   AND   TAMBURINI  99 

twin  soul.  Marriage  followed  soon  after  and 
the  affinity  proved  to  be  a  thoroughly  happy 
one.  As  their  professional  association  was 
constant  during  the  next  thirty  years,  and  the 
story  of  one  now  becomes  the  story  of  the 
other,  it  seems  best  at  this  point  to  narrate 
the  principal  events  of  Mario's  previous  life. 

We  do  not  know  with  certainty  either 
Mario's  full  name  or  the  exact  time  and  place 
of  his  birth.  This  uncertainty  is  all  the  more 
curious  because  he  was  of  noble  family.  Some 
authorities  hold  that  his  name  was  Giovanni 
and  that  the  name  of  Mario,  under  which  he  al- 
ways sang,  was  wholly  assumed;  others  aver 
that  Mario  was  really  his  name  and  that  when 
he  went  on  the  stage  he  merely  dropped  his 
patronymic,  de  Candia.  Whatever  his  exact 
name,  he  will  always  be  remembered  under 
that  of  Mario,  without  title  or  surname.  He 
was  born  somewhere  in  Piedmont,  probably 
in  Turin,  in  or  about  1810.* 

His  father  was  a  general  in  the  army  of 
Piedmont  and  Mario,  too,  after  an  educa- 
tion suitable  to  his  high  social  position,  en- 
tered the  army.  In  1836,  piqued  by  his  pun- 
ishment for  an  escapade  of  no  great  serious- 
ness, he  resigned  from  his  regiment,  and,  when 
the  authorities  refused  to  accept  his  resigna- 
tion, hied  him  boldly  to  Paris.    There  his  good 


•Mario's  daughter  fixes  these   points   as   follows:     Giovanni 
Matteo  de  Candia,  born  October  i8,  1810,  in  Cagliari,  Sardinia. 


IOO    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

breeding,  his  beauty  and  his  great  personal 
charm  opened  for  him  every  door.  To  com- 
plete his  equipment  as  a  captivator  of  hearts 
he  possessed  a  tenor  voice,  untrained,  but  of 
exquisite  suavity  and  mellowness. 

His  qualifications  for  the  lyric  stage  were 
so  many  and  so  obvious  that  on  all  sides  he 
was  urged  to  appear  in  opera.  All  his  fam- 
ily traditions  were  against  such  a  step,  and  for 
two  years  he  withstood  the  blandishments  and 
offers  of  the  managers,  but  finally  gave  his 
consent,  and  in  1838  made  his  debut  in  "Robert 
le  Diable"  at  the  Paris  Opera,  singing  in 
French.  He  had  had  no  systematic  training 
in  music  or  singing,  his  acting  was  amateurish 
and  the  French  language  somewhat  impeded 
his  utterance,  but  his  radiant  person  and  his 
lovely  voice  more  than  counterbalanced  his 
shortcomings.  In  1839  he  made  his  London 
debut  with  Grisi  in  "Lucrezia  Borgia"  (in 
Italian),  and  the  following  year  joined  the 
Italian  company  in  Paris. 

At  the  age  of  thirty  Mario  could  have 
played  the  part  of  Orpheus  to  perfection.  He 
was  of  medium  height,  graceful  in  line  and 
carriage.  His  features  were  clean-cut  and 
noble,  his  hair  and  beard  glossy  black.  His 
eyes  were  large  and  dark,  full  of  fire  and 
passion.  His  voice  was  a  ringing  tenor,  even 
in  quality  throughout,  and  including  in  its  com- 
pass the  high  C.     It  was  equally  eloquent  in 


MARIO    DB    CANDIA 
1810-1S83 


GRISI,    MARIO   AND   TAMBURINI  IOI 

the  expression  of  both  the  fire  and  the  passion 
that  shone  in  his  eyes.  One  French  critic  re- 
cords that  the  emission  of  the  upper  notes  was 
not  quite  free,  but,  with  this  possible  excep- 
tion, the  voice  must  have  nearly  approached 
perfection. 

Happily,  Mario  was  as  conscientious  and 
ambitious  as  he  was  gifted,  so  that,  despite  his 
lack  of  early  training,  the  record  of  his  career 
is  one  of  constant  artistic  growth.  His  asso- 
ciation with  Grisi  was  most  influential  in  this 
development,  for  she  was  born  into  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  stage,  and,  besides,  was  as  ambi- 
tious for  him  as  he  was  for  himself. 

As  an  actor  he  never  attained  the  skill  and 
versatility  of  such  innate  histrions  as  the 
Garcias  and  Lablache,  but  his  elegance  of  bear- 
ing and  a  taste  for  costume  equalled  by  that 
of  Lablache  alone  made  his  stage  presence 
always  a  delight  to  the  eye.  No  other  tenor, 
not  even  Nourrit,  was  so  successful  as  he  in 
playing  the  high-born  gentleman — it  was  in- 
stinct with  him,  both  off  and  on  the 
stage. 

He  was  matchless,  too,  as  a  stage  lover  and 
as  a  drawing-room  singer.  His  personality 
and  voice  were  profoundly  disquieting  to  the 
peace  of  mind  of  unattached  ladies.  It  is  re- 
lated that  once  he  was  singing  in  a  salon  in 
Paris.  The  last  line  of  his  song  was,  "Come, 
love,  with  me  into  the  woods."    As  he  uttered 


102   SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

the  final  syllables  a  young  woman,  who  had 
been  listening  in  a  state  of  semi-hypnosis,  rose 
to  her  feet  and  tottered  toward  him,  murmur- 
ing, "I  am  coming." 

After  the  retirement  of  Rubini,  Mario  suc- 
ceeded to  the  position  so  long  held  by  the  older 
man.  As  a  singer  he  was  not  Rubini's  equal 
in  poignancy  of  expression  or  in  technical  re- 
source, but  he  surpassed  him  in  sweetness  and 
elegance  of  style  and  was  immeasurably  his 
superior  as  an  actor.  His  art  was  at  its 
best  in  "La  Favorita"  and  in  the  fourth  act 
of  "Les  Huguenots,"  but  he  was  almost  as 
successful  in  a  number  of  other  operas.  His 
turn  of  mind  was  not  originative,  and  the 
only  "creation"  credited  to  him  in  all  his  long 
career  was  the  small  tenor  part  in  "Don 
Pasquale." 

After  their  marriage,  Grisi  and  Mario 
divided  their  time  between  Paris  and  London, 
in  both  of  which  cities  they  continued  to  be 
great  favorites.  Mario  never  sang  in  Italy. 
Grisi  was  most  conscientious  in  her  attitude 
toward  the  public,  always  seeking  its  appro- 
bation and  proud  of  her  reputation  for  relia- 
bility. Mario  was  much  more  sensitive  by 
temperament,  and  reserved  to  himself  the 
tenor's  privilege  of  giving  out  at  the  last 
moment. 

For  two  such  eminent  singers  to  live  and 
work  together  for  thirty  years  without  a  trace 


GRISI,    MARIO    AND   TAMBURINI  103 

of  artistic  jealousy  gives  to  our  two  artists  a 
unique  place  in  operatic  history.  This  ele- 
ment of  domestic  felicity  was  a  considerable 
factor  in  their  popularity,  especially  in  Eng- 
land. Grisi  adored  her  husband  and  received 
from  him  in  return  a  loyal  affection  undis- 
turbed by  the  feminine  adulation  of  which  he 
was  always  the  object.  His  greatest  pleasure 
was  to  stay  at  home  with  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren ;  his  only  weaknesses  were  an  inordinate 
love  of  tobacco  and  a  dread  of  the  number  13. 
According  to  all  rules  of  vocal  hygiene,  smok- 
ing ought  to  have  ruined  his  voice,  for  he  was 
never  without  a  lighted  cigar,  except  when 
singing,  sleeping  and  eating ;  but  as  he  was  still 
singing  at  the  age  of  sixty,  we  shall  have  to 
write  him  down  as  an  exception  beyond  the 
law.  Nor  did  the  dreaded  13  ever  seem  to 
work  him  serious  injury. 

Six  daughters  were  the  fruit  of  the  mar- 
riage, of  whom  three  only  lived  to  maturity. 
One  day,  when  Grisi  was  walking  in  the  park 
with  them,  she  met  a  lord  of  high  degree 
whom  she  knew.  He  stopped  and  said, 
jocosely :  "These,  madam,  are,  I  suppose, 
your  little  grisettes?"  "Oh,  no,  sir!  These 
are  my  little  marionettes." 

For  fifteen  years  Grisi  and  Mario  sang  only 
in  Europe.  In  1842  they,  with  Albertazzi 
and  Tamburini,  formed  the  first  quartet  to 
sing  Rossini's  "Stabat  Mater."     Rubini's  re- 


104    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

tirement  gave  Mario  ample  scope  for  his  tal- 
ents, and  no  new  prima  donnas  of  power  ap- 
peared to  imperil  Grisi's  supremacy ;  but  as 
time  went  on  they  began  to  yearn  for  new 
worlds  to  conquer,  and  in  1854  completed  ar- 
rangements for  a  visit  to  America,  which  had 
recently  shown  itself  so  hospitable  to  Jenny 
Lind  and  Sontag. 

In  August,  1854,  they  arrived  in  New  York, 
under  contract  for  six  months  for  the  sum  of 
about  $85,000.  In  September  they  opened 
their  season  at  Castle  Garden  with  "Lucrezia 
Borgia,"  best  seats  three  dollars.  In  the  sup- 
porting company  were  Susini,  an  excellent 
bass,  and  Barili,  the  mother  of  Adelina  Patti. 
The  performance  went  off  smoothly  and  the 
company  was  accepted  as  thoroughly  compe- 
tent, but  there  was  a  coolness  on  the  part  of 
the  public,  quite  different  from  the  hearty 
welcome  accorded  to  Jenny  Lind  and,  after 
her,  almost  as  generously  to  Sontag. 
"Norma,"  given  in  the  course  of  the  second 
week,  was  received  a  little  more  cordially. 

In  October  the  company  was  engaged  to  in- 
augurate the  present  Academy  of  Music  on 
the  corner  of  Irving  Place  and  Fourteenth 
Street.  October  2,  1854,  was  the  date, 
"Norma"  the  opera.  The  best  seats  were  two 
dollars.  It  would  seem  as  if  New  York  would 
have  been  keen  to  hear  a  performance  of  one 
of  the  most  popular  operas  of  the  day  by  the 


GRISI,    MARIO   AND   TAMBURINI  105 

best  opera  company  that  had  ever  come  to 
town,  especially  in  a  theatre  as  handsome  and 
commodious  as  it  was  new.  But  all  signs 
failed,  and  the  two  most  famous  singers  of 
Europe  had  to  sing  one  of  their  favorite 
operas  to  a  half -empty  house.  Richard  Grant 
White,  who  was  there,  thought  it,  on  the 
whole,  rather  a  dull  evening ;  Mario  and  Grisi 
had  passed  their  prime,  both  of  them,  he  de- 
cided, and  had  nothing  striking  or  novel  to 
offer  the  American  public. 

The  success  of  the  season  did  not  increase 
as  time  went  on,  but  there  was  a  financial  guar- 
antee to  ensure  the  completion  of  the  tour. 
The  company  visited  other  cities,  but  no  de- 
tailed account  of  the  winter  is  available.  One 
amusing  story,  however,  has  survived,  to  the 
effect  that  a  performance  of  "Norma"  was 
given  in  Washington  during  a  heavy  rain- 
storm, and  that  the  roof  was  so  leaky  that 
Norma  (Grisi)  had  to  clothe  herself  in  a 
heavy  fur  coat,  while  Pollione  (Mario)  war- 
bled his  loveliest  beneath  the  shelter  of  a  huge 
coachman's  umbrella.  After  seventy  per- 
formances, all  told,  Grisi  and  Mario  returned 
to  Europe. 

Twenty-five  years  of  hard  and  continuous 
service  had  by  now  decidedly  impaired  the 
freshness  of  Grisi's  voice,  and  Mario's  powers, 
too,  were  on  the  wane;  it  was  time  to  think 
of  retirement.     So  they  bought  them  a  com- 


106    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

fortable  villa  near  Florence,  in  which  to  pass 
their  declining  years.  Rubini  said,  when  he 
retired:  "It  is  time  to  retire,  because  it  is 
too  soon,"  and  never  sang  in  public  again. 
But  Grisi  and  Mario  were  less  firm  in  their 
resolution  to  withdraw.  They  had  grown  to 
love  the  stage  too  well  to  be  able  now  to  resist 
the  call  of  the  footlights  and  the  craving  for 
the  applause  of  the  public;  besides,  although 
they  had  made  a  great  deal  of  money,  they 
were  extravagant  in  their  way  of  living  and 
always  had  hard  work  to  keep  their  outgo 
within  the  limits  of  their  income. 

So  they  continued  to  sing  wherever  they 
saw  a  chance  to  turn  an  honest  penny.  In 
1 86 1  Grisi  signed  an  agreement  with  a  man- 
ager not  to  sing  again  in  London  for  five  years. 
For  a  woman  of  her  age,  such  a  pledge  seemed 
tantamount  to  a  final  farewell,  but  in  1866 
she  was  singing  "Lucrezia"  once  more  at  Her 
Majesty's  Theatre.  Her  voice  was  gone,  but 
not  her  ambition  and  zeal.  In  1869  she  died 
suddenly  in  Berlin,  while  Mario  was  singing 
in  St.  Petersburg. 

In  1872  Mario  came  again  to  the  United 
States  to  sing  in  concert.  He  was  now  old 
and  all  but  voiceless;  the  tour  was  a  pitiful 
failure.  Poor  and  broken,  he  retired,  first 
to  Paris,  and  then  to  Rome,  where  he  died  in 
1883. 

Although  Grisi  and  Mario  sang  much  too 


GRISI,    MARIO    AND   TAMBURINI  IO7 

long  for  the  good  of  their  reputations,  the 
very  length  of  their  careers  serves  as  an  in- 
teresting link  with  a  remote  past.  Many 
elderly  people  still  living  heard  in  their  youth 
Grisi,  the  colleague  of  Pasta  and  Malibran, 
and  Mario,  the  immediate  successor,  almost 
the  contemporary,  of  Rubini. 

There  is  no  denying  to  Grisi  a  very  high 
place  among  the  galaxy  of  prima  donnas  of 
her  era.  She  was  inferior  to  Pasta  in  dra- 
matic instinct,  to  Malibran  in  versatility  and 
spontaneity,  to  Sontag  as  a  vocalist  and  mu- 
sician; but  her  talents  were,  on  the  whole, 
so  considerable  and  so  well  balanced  that  her 
achievements  will  bear  comparison  with  those 
of  any  singer  in  history. 

The  name  of  Mario,  too,  will  always  be 
held  in  honorable  memory.  Inferior  to  Garcia 
and  Rubini  in  creative  qualities,  he  became, 
nevertheless,  by  virtue  of  his  powers  to  charm 
and  delight,  the  legitimate  heir  to  their  laurels 
and  prolonged  worthily  the  traditions  that  they 
had  created.  The  sun  itself  set  with  Rubini ; 
Mario  was  the  mellow  afterglow,  which  is 
quite  as  lovely  in  its  way  as  the  radiance  of 
day  itself.  With  Mario  the  line  of  great  lyric 
tenors  came  to  an  end. 

Between  1825  and  1850,  no  bass  in  Europe, 
except  Lablache,  was  held  in  higher  esteem 
than  Antonio  Tamburini.     He  was  born  in 


108   SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

Faenza  in  1800.  His  father  was  a  band- 
master, who  aimed  to  make  a  horn-player 
of  him,  but  his  aptitude  for  singing  an- 
nounced itself  early  and  made  him,  at  twelve 
years  of  age,  a  member  of  the  opera  chorus, 
which  took  part  also  in  the  choral  music  of 
the  church. 

The  boy  had  many  opportunities  to  hear  the 
great  singers  of  the  day,  and  profited  by  them 
so  well  that  at  eighteen  he  was  engaged  to 
sing  bass  parts  in  the  opera  in  Bologna.  This 
led  to  an  engagement  at  Naples,  which,  in  turn, 
paved  the  way  for  Florence,  Venice,  Trieste, 
Rome,  Milan  and  Vienna.  At  Vienna  he  and 
Rubini  were  awarded  the  Order  of  the 
Saviour,  an  honor  hitherto  granted  to  no  for- 
eigner but  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 

Tamburini's  voice  was  a  noble  basso 
cantante  of  two  evenly  developed  octaves,  and 
of  such  extraordinary  flexibility  as  to  win  for 
him  the  title  of  "the  bass  Rubini."  We  may 
judge  of  its  power  from  the  fact  that  it  was 
able  to  hold  its  own  with  "the  human 
ophicleide,"  Lablache,  in  the  popular  duet  for 
two  basses  in  "I  Puritani."  Rossini,  writing  to 
a  friend  in  Italy  about  the  first  performance 
of  this  opera,  said:  "I  need  not  describe  to 
you  the  duo  for  two  basses — the  sound  of  it 
must  surely  have  reached  your  ears." 

Tamburini  was  a  handsome  man  and  an 
excellent,  though  not  an  inspired,  actor.     He 


GRISI,    MARIO    AND   TAMBURINI  IO9 

was  chiefly  celebrated  as  a  singer  of  Rossini's 
music,  but  he  was  almost  equally  successful  in 
other  operas  of  the  repertory,  including  "Don 
Giovanni." 

As  an  instance  of  his  versatility,  an  amus- 
ing story  is  told.  He  was  singing  in  Palermo 
during  the  Carnival.  The  theatre  was  full  of 
merrymakers,  much  more  intent  on  making  a 
noise  themselves  than  on  listening  to  music 
made  by  others.  Tamburini's  first  at- 
tempts to  make  himself  heard  were  vain. 
Suddenly  he  ceased  to  use  his  natural 
voice  and  began  to  sing  in  a  falsetto 
so  shrill  and  clear  that  it  surmounted 
the  racket  made  by  the  roysterers.  The  crowd 
was  delighted  with  the  novelty  and  received 
the  prima  donna  on  her  entrance  with  such 
an  uproar  of  enthusiasm  that  she  lost  her 
nerve  completely,  rushed  out  of  the  back  door 
of  the  theatre,  and  was  seen  no  more  that 
night.  The  manager  was  in  despair — no  prima 
donna,  no  opera !  But  Tamburini  was  equal 
to  the  occasion.  Clothing  himself  in  as  much 
of  the  soprano's  costume  as  he  could  find  and 
squeeze  into,  he  returned  to  the  stage,  where 
he  sang  all  her  music  in  falsetto  and  played 
her  part  with  mirth-provoking  fervor.  He 
played  and  sang  both  parts  in  a  duet  for  so- 
prano and  bass.  To  cap  the  climax,  in  re- 
sponse to  the  demands  of  the  audience,  now 
quite  hysterical  with  delight,  he  executed  a 
spirited  dance  with  the  corps  de  ballet. 


IIO   SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

In  1832  he  was  heard  for  the  first  time  in 
London  and  Paris,  and  for  a  number  of  years 
was  an  important  member  of  the  "Old  Guard." 
In  1840  the  London  manager,  in  a  futile  at- 
tempt to  break  the  power  of  this  coterie,  did 
not  engage  Tamburini — an  omission  that  re- 
sulted in  a  series  of  riots  and  the  re- 
engagement  of  the  favorite  bass  for  the  fol- 
lowing season. 

Like  Grisi  and  Mario,  Tamburini  continued 
to  sing  long  after  his  voice  had  lost  its  beauty. 
In  1852  he  was  singing  in  London  with  only 
an  echo  of  his  former  sonorous  tones.  Paris 
heard  him,  too,  at  that  time,  and  Holland. 
In  1859  he  sang  in  London  for  the  last  time. 
He  made  his  home  in  Nice,  and  died  there 
in  1876. 


Some  Conclusions 


N  selecting  for  review  the  lives  of 
a  few  of  the  famous  singers  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  I  have  lim- 
ited myself  to  the  group  of  mem- 
orable artists  that  shared  with  Rossini,  Bel- 
lini and  Donizetti  the  operatic  glories  of  their 
epoch.  Lack  of  space  has  forbidden  me  to 
do  more  than  refer  to  Alboni,  whose  contralto 
voice  may  well  have  been  the  most  perfect 
of  the  whole  century,  and  I  have  not  even 
mentioned  Pisaroni,  another  contralto,  whom 
Chorley  named  as  worthy  of  a  place  in  his 
ideal  quartet,  in  company  with  Pasta,  Duprez 
and  Lablache.  Then  there  were  Persiani,  the 
most  accomplished  coloratura  singer  of  the 
period,  for  whom  Donizetti  wrote  the  part  of 
Lucia,  and  Ronconi,  too,  the  baritone  whose 
artistic  quality  made  one  oblivious  to  the 
mediocrity  of  his  voice.  But,  without  fuller  or 
further  reference  to  these  four  worthy  sing- 
ers, we  shall  find  that  the  careers  of  those 
I  have  written  about  furnish  ample  material 
from  which  to  draw  some  interesting  and 
instructive  conclusions. 
in 


112    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

How  did  these  singers  compare  with  those 
of  our  own  time?  Were  their  voices  better 
in  quality,  or  better  trained  in  technique? 
Were  they  better  musicians  or  more  resource- 
ful actors?  Such  questions  as  these  are  un- 
answerable, but  of  one  thing  we  may  be  sure: 
the  qualities  that  made  these  old  singers  fa- 
mous in  their  day  and  generation,  would,  if 
they  were  living  and  singing  now,  make  them 
just  as  famous  as  they  were  then.  We  could 
count  upon  Garcia  and  Malibran  for  a  per- 
formance of  "Carmen"  as  thrilling  as  any  we 
have  ever  had  in  America.  Wrhat  an  Isolde 
would  Pasta  make,  and  that  Lablache  died  too 
soon  to  sing  Verdi's  "Falstaff"  deprives  the 
world  of  what  unquestionably  would  have 
been  one  of  the  most  perfect  impersonations 
in  all  operatic  history! 

As  I  have  said,  the  operas  in  which  these 
old  singers  achieved  their  celebrity  are  all, 
except  one,  dead  or  moribund,  "But  in  Music 
we  know  how  fashions  end"  and,  likely 
enough,  in  the  year  2000  the  repertory  of 
1900  will  be  in  like  state,  without  in  the  least 
diminishing  thereby  the  great  names  left  be- 
hind them  by  Lehmann  and  Jean  de  Reszke, 
who  artistically  are  the  lineal  descendants  of 
Pasta  and  Garcia.  Rossini  and  his  school 
understood  thoroughly  the  possibilities  of  the 
human  voice  and  were  in  considerable  part  in- 
strumental in   forming  a  method  of  singing 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  113 

founded  upon  principles  that  are  just  as 
sound  and  admirable  to-day  as  they  were 
eighty  years  ago.  Lili  Lehmann  mastered 
these  principles  in  her  youth,  and  so  late  as 
1899  sang  Norma  with  the  same  noble  ar- 
tistry that  illuminated  her  Isolde.  Jean  de 
Reszke,  too,  surpassed  all  other  Wagnerian 
tenors  by  virtue  of  the  vocal  means  that  he 
owed  to  his  knowledge  of  bel  canto. 

The  treatment  of  the  human  voice  as  a 
solo  instrument  for  the  interpretation  of  art 
music  dates  back  only  to  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  birth-time  of  opera,  and 
from  that  time  down  to  our  own  we  shall  find 
the  history  of  singing  closely  interwoven  with 
that  of  opera.  All  the  greatest  singers  have 
made  their  names  in  opera  chiefly,  and  have 
devoted  themselves  to  concert  singing  inci- 
dentally only.  We  know  very  little  about 
methods  of  singing  previous  to  1700,  but  the 
ever-growing  popularity  of  opera  has  pro- 
duced since  that  date  a  voluminous  literature, 
which  furnishes  us  with  an  interesting,  though 
tantalizingly  incomplete,  knowledge  of  the 
subject. 

Since  1700  the  art  of  singing  has  reached 
two  climaxes.  The  date  of  the  first  of  these 
may  be  fixed  about  1740,  when  Handel's 
vogue  as  an  operatic  composer  was  at  its 
height.  Opera  then  had  drifted  far  away 
from  the  spirit  of  drama  and  had  crystallized 


114    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

into  a  conventional  form  of  lyric  expression. 
The  singer  had  nothing  to  do  but  sing;  as 
Victor  Maurel  puts  it,  "the  singer  was  not 
required  to  render  the  sentiments  of  the 
dramatis  personce  with  verisimilitude ;  all  that 
was  demanded  of  him  was  harmonious  sounds, 
the  bel  canto."  Of  this  school  of  singing 
Farinelli,  Senesino,  Cuzzoni  and  Pacchiarotti 
were  typical  and  in  them  vocal  technique  and 
skill  in  phrasing  must  often  have  touched  per- 
fection itself. 

The  second  climactic  point  was  reached 
about  a  century  after  the  first — 1835,  the 
birth-year  of  "I  Puritani,"  marks,  perhaps,  the 
time  when  the  modern  school  of  bel  canto 
was  at  the  very  zenith  of  its  excellence.  The 
singer  was  now  responsible  for  something  be- 
sides the  perfect  emission  of  his  voice;  he 
was  expected  to  interpret  dramatically,  as  well 
as  musically.  Such  librettos  as  those  of 
"Otello,"  "Norma"  and  "Lucrezia  Borgia" 
required  of  the  singer  a  substantial  minimum 
of  skill  in  the  portrayal  of  human  emotions, 
and  the  public  estimate  of  the  value  of  an 
operatic  artist  was  much  influenced  by  his 
dramatic  competence.  In  fact,  the  success  of 
many  singers,  including  Pasta  and  Pauline 
Garcia,  was  largely  due  to  their  capacity  as 
actors,  which  outweighed  their  vocal  short- 
comings. 

These  increasing  histrionic  demands  might 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  H5 

easily  have  lowered  the  vocal  standard  had  not 
the  composer  borne  in  mind  the  novel  condi- 
tions. In  the  eighteenth  century  the  singer 
had  been  allowed  an  almost  unlimited  license 
in  the  matter  of  ornamentation;  the  melody 
was  only  a  skeleton,  which  the  singer  might 
dress  with  such  embellishments  as  his  own 
taste  or  fancy  might  dictate.  It  is  told  of 
Garcia  that  he  disapproved  of  a  melody  that 
had  been  assigned  to  him  in  a  new  opera  and 
absolutely  refused  to  rehearse  it,  saying  that 
there  need  be  no  uneasiness  on  that  score,  be- 
cause he  should  be  quite  ready  with  it  at 
the  first  performance.  Finally,  when  the  time 
came,  he  substituted  a  melody,  entirely  his 
own,  which  harmonized  perfectly  with  the 
accompaniment  composed  for  the  original 
melody.  Such  effrontery  would,  of  course,  be 
simply  impossible  under  modern  conditions. 

Rossini  was  the  first  composer  to  prescribe 
the  notes  and  ornaments  exactly  as  he  wished 
to  have  them  sung,  but  he  was,  none  the  less, 
an  opportunist,  as  well  as  a  man  of  genius, 
and  neither  he  nor  Bellini  nor  Donizetti  ever 
wrote  anything  that  could  overtax  the  vocal 
powers  of  their  singers.  The  orchestra,  then 
a  much  smaller  body  of  instruments  than  now, 
was  the  loyal,  self -obliterating  follower  of  the 
voice,  and  never,  as  in  the  later  Verdi  and 
Wagner,  the  jealous  and  aggressive  rival.  In 
their  mutual  relations  the  voice  always  took 


Il6    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

precedence.  Furthermore,  the  opera  houses 
built  before  1850  were  less  spacious  and  less 
richly  decorated  and  upholstered  than  those 
of  the  present  day.  Altogether,  all  the  con- 
ditions for  an  unstrained  emission  of  the  voice 
were  so  favorable  that  Mr.  W.  J.  Henderson, 
an  authority  on  such  matters,  is  of  the  opin- 
ion that  the  old  singers  employed  habitually 
a  much  smaller  volume  of  tone  than  that  used 
to-day.  If  Mr.  Henderson's  theory  is  cor- 
rect, we  have  ground  for  thinking  that  the 
lowering  of  vocal  standards  during  the  past 
fifty  years  is  due  to  the  attempt  on  the  part 
of  the  singer  to  increase  the  size  of  his  voice 
in  direct  ratio  with  the  increase  in  the  size 
of  orchestras  and  auditoriums. 

We  may,  if  we  will,  characterize  the  operas 
of  Rossini  and  his  immediate  successors  as 
silly,  insincere,  old-fashioned,  or  obsolete,  but 
we  cannot  deny  that  they  gave  satisfaction  to 
a  generation  that  knew  not  only  the  music 
of  Mozart,  Beethoven  and  Mendelssohn,  but 
also  the  dramatic  art  of  Talma,  Kemble  and 
Siddons.  The  fact  that  so  sophisticated  a 
public  as  that  of  Paris  during  the  reign  of 
Louis  Philippe  considered  the  operas  of  Ros- 
sini, Bellini  and  Donizetti  fit  mediums  for  the 
indisputable  talents  of  Pasta,  the  Garcias, 
Duprez  and  Lablache  counsels  us  to  accord  to 
these  old  and  mostly-forgotten  operas  some- 
thing  of    the    reverence    that    we   hold    for 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  WJ 

the     great     artists     for     whom     they     were 
written. 

Certain  it  is  that  Tamagno  and  Maurel 
never  stirred  their  public  more  profoundly  in 
Verdi's  "Otello"  than  did  Garcia  and  Mali- 
bran  theirs  sixty  years  earlier  in  Rossini's 
version  of  the  same  tragic  story;  nor  did 
Lehmann  or  Ternina  arouse  the  sympathies 
of  their  hearers  more  surely  in  "Tristan  und 
Isolde"  than  did  Pasta  move  her  audiences  in 
Mayer's  "Medea."  The  combination  of  qual- 
ities that  makes  an  artist  great  is  rarely  to  be 
found,  but  it  is  quite  unrelated  to  time  or 
place.  Pasta  would  have  been  a  great  artist 
if  she  had  been  born  a  hundred  years  later, 
and,  equally,  Ternina's  splendid  gifts  would 
have  been  recognized  and  admired  a  century 
ago. 

But  what  are  the  qualities  that  go  to  make 
a  great  singer  in  this  or  any  generation?  Dif- 
ficult as  it  is  to  answer  this  question  con- 
clusively, we  have  enough  data  before  us  to 
form  a  safe  opinion  as  to  how  the  various 
members  of  one  group  of  famous  singers 
achieved  their  renown. 

Was  it  Rossini,  or  was  it  some  earlier  au- 
thority that  asserted  for  the  first  time  that 
the  three  requisites  for  success  as  a  singer 
are  Voice,  Voice  and — Voice?  Whoever  it 
was,  the  man  uttered  at  most  no  more  than  a 
half-truth.     Catalani  was  a  beautiful  woman 


1  1 8    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

with  a  beautiful  voice  and  nothing  more, 
while  Pasta  was  a  plain  woman  with  an  un- 
tuneful  voice,  but  Pasta  is  ranked  much 
higher  than  Catalani  among  the  world's  great 
singers.  Maria  and  Pauline  Garcia  and  even 
Jenny  Lind  possessed  voices  not  more  beauti- 
ful than  many  another.  Rubini  in  his  early 
days  was  not  thought  worthy  of  even  a  place 
in  the  chorus  and  Duprez  was  more  than 
thirty  before  he  won  recognition  in  his  native 
city,  Paris. 

As  every  singing  teacher  knows,  mere 
beauty  of  voice  is  by  no  means  rare ;  what  is 
rare  is  the  effective  will  to  develop  the  voice 
to  its  utmost  capacity.  Natural  beauty  of  voice 
is  often  even  a  detriment  to  its  possessor,  for 
it  may  tempt  him  to  rely  on  nature,  rather 
than  on  art,  for  his  victories.  The  solidest 
foundation  of  all  for  a  career  is  an  artistic 
ambition  that  will  not  be  denied.  This  ambi- 
tion includes  the  qualities  of  self-denial,  pa- 
tience, and  industry ;  it  needs  to  be  guided 
by  a  keen  intelligence  and  fortified  by  a  sound, 
vigorous  body;  then,  if  it  be  furnished,  too, 
with  a  voice  of  good  quality  and  power,  we 
have  the  wherewithal  to  build  a  great  career. 

The  early  struggles  of  Pasta,  Rubini  and 
Duprez  offer  a  precious  lesson  to  young  sing- 
ers that  believe  the  world  cruel  in  refusing 
to  accept  them  immediately  at  their  own  valua- 
tion.   Even  those  of  their  colleagues  to  whom 


SOME   CONCLUSIONS  HO, 

recognition  came  speedily  (excepting  Cata- 
lani,  whose  attitude  toward  her  art  was  in 
no  way  commendable)  made  and  sustained 
their  reputations  by  virtue  of  their  unswerv- 
ing devotion  to  high  artistic  ideals.  The  at- 
tainment of  every  height  was  but  the  point  of 
departure  for  a  loftier  flight.  Sontag,  after 
twenty  years  of  retirement,  won  a  new  celeb- 
rity in  an  entirely  new  repertory.  Malibran 
was  always  learning  new  roles  and  perfecting 
herself  in  those  she  had  already  sung.  Jenny 
Lind,  to  use  Paderewski's  phrase  about  him- 
self, stood  in  humility  and  reverence  before 
God  and  her  art.  I  have  spoken  more  than 
once  of  Pasta's  indomitable  will  and,  as  for 
Garcia,  there  never  was  a  man  so  ready  to 
undertake  any  new  labor,  no  matter  how 
onerous,  in  order  to  broaden  his  artistic  scope. 
Even  Lablache,  the  perfect  artist,  to  whom 
all  gifts  had  been  given,  was  as  conscientious 
in  the  preparation  and  performance  of  his 
roles  as  if  he  were  an  unrecognized  novice. 
With  such  examples  as  these  before  us,  we 
shall  not  be  far  from  right  if  we  change 
the  recipe  for  success  from  one  of  having 
into  one  of  doing — "Voice,  Voice  and — 
Voice"  into  "Work,  Work  and— Work." 

It  is  worth  noting  how  completely  ready 
these  singers  of  the  past  were  for  stage  careers. 
A  number  of  them  were,  so  to  speak,  born  on 
the  stage.     Sontag,  Malibran  and  Jenny  Lind 


120   SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

appeared  publicly  in  children's  parts  almost 
as  soon  as  they  could  toddle,  and  all  of  the 
women  were  full-fledged  prima  donnas  before 
they  reached  the  age  of  twenty.  Rubini,  Du- 
prez  and  Mario  were  men  grown  when  their 
success  came,  but  Garcia,  Nourrit,  Tamburini 
and  Lablache  were  still  boys  in  their  'teens. 
Nowadays  training  for  opera  begins  only 
when  a  young  man  or  woman  has  shown  un- 
mistakable signs  of  having  an  exceptional 
voice,  and  more  often  than  not  there  has  been 
no  general  musical  education  at  all.  Such  a 
situation  is  not  altogether  different  from  that 
of  a  young  man  who,  though  without  musical 
aptitude,  should  decide  to  become  a  profes- 
sional violinist,  simply  because  he  has  inher- 
ited a  Guarnerius  violin. 

All  of  the  singers  in  our  group,  except  Cata- 
lani,  the  unambitious,  and  Mario,  the  gifted 
amateur,  were  thoroughly  versed  in  everything 
connected  with  the  operatic  stage.  Several 
of  them  were  capable  instrumentalists,  sev- 
eral were  skilful  with  the  pencil,  several  were 
respectable  composers,  one,  even,  was  a  poet. 
All  of  them,  except  Catalani  and  Rubini,  were 
competent  actors ;  some  of  them  might  well 
have  made  names  for  themselves  in  the  spoken 
drama.  In  our  own  time  singers  are  rarely  so 
completely  equipped  for  their  work.  The  old 
way  certainly  produced  a  high  standard  of  all- 
around  excellence. 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  121 

This  long  and  thorough-going  intimacy 
with  their  profession  developed  in  the  old 
singers  a  trait,  the  importance  of  which  can- 
not be  too  highly  recommended  to  the  student 
and  the  young  artist — self-dependence.  I  do 
not  underrate  the  value  of  preparatory  study 
under  the  guidance  of  teachers ;  indeed,  no 
singer  ever  reaches  the  point  where  he  can 
dispense  altogether  with  criticism  from  others. 
The  voice  is  so  much  a  part  of  one's  self  that 
one  cannot  listen  to  it  objectively,  and  objec- 
tive criticism  is  what  every  singer  needs  from 
time  to  time  as  long  as  he  sings.  But  students 
are  much  too  apt  not  to  rely  enough  on  their 
own  initiative  and  to  believe  that  great  artists 
can  be  turned  out  ready  made  from  the  studio 
of  a  good  teacher.  The  untried  novice  who 
feels  that  he  is  already  competent  to  assume 
first  roles  in  New  York  or  Berlin  or  Paris  is 
met  with  too  frequently  in  musical  circles. 
This  belief  is  fraught  with  danger.  All  of  the 
old  artists  mastered  their  art  through  practis- 
ing it.  They  were  trained  first  as  musicians, 
learning  even  as  children  something  of  the 
proper  use  of  the  voice  in  the  chorus  and  in 
church  choirs.  Then,  as  their  voices  ma- 
tured, they  took  small  solo  parts  in  unimport- 
ant companies,  advancing,  according  to  their 
fitness,  until  they  were  assigned  first  parts  in 
the  large  theatres.  By  some  such  route  as  this 
nearly  all  of  the  world's  great  singers  have 


122    SINGERS  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

journeyed  from  the  lowlands  of  obscurity  to 
the  heights  of  fame. 

From  the  records  of  the  past,  as  well  as 
observations   of   the  present,   I   am   disposed 
to  assert  in  a  general  way  that  the  term  of  a 
singer's  professional  life  is  two  score  years  and 
ten.    Singers  themselves  are  the  poorest  judges 
of  the  proper  moment  for  their  own  retire- 
ment, because  they  cannot  hear  the  ravages 
that  time  has  made  in  their  voices.    They  can- 
not accept  the  fact  that,  though  the  intellectual 
mastery  of  their  art  is  on  the  increase,  their 
physical  resources  may  be  diminishing.    Cata- 
lani,  Grisi,  Garcia,  Mario  and  Tamburini  all 
continued  to  sing  after  they  had  past  the  half- 
century  mark,  although  their  voices  had  suf- 
fered    a    noticeable     deterioration.       Pasta's 
voice  had  gone  at  forty,  Duprez's  at  forty- 
five.     Pauline   Garcia   retired  at  the  age  of 
forty  for  reasons  unknown ;  Jenny  Lind  with- 
drew even  earlier.     That  Lablache  was  able 
to  give  pleasure  with  his  singing  till  he  was 
sixty  was  probably  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
bass  voice  is  the  most  durable  of  all  voices. 
Rubini  retired  at  forty-eight,  his  voice  already 
somewhat     impaired.       Singing    belongs     to 
youth.     When  the  feeling  and  the  physique 
of  youth  are  gone  the  only  pleasure  that  sing- 
ing can  give  to  the  hearer  is  either  that  of 
reminiscence,   the  echo   of   sounds   heard  on 
an    earlier   day,   or   that   of    admiration   for 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  123 

mastery     over     an     instrument     no     longer 
perfect. 

The  more  we  study  the  history  of  singers 
the  more  clearly  we  perceive  that  there  is  one 
thing  that  a  singer  must  possess  if  he  is  to 
travel  far  in  his  career.  Alone  it  can  do  but 
little  for  him,  yet  without  it  the  greatest  gifts 
come  to  nothing.  He  must  have  vigorous 
health.  He  needs  a  body  capable  of  resisting 
severe  physical  and  nervous  strain,  of  adapt- 
ing itself  easily  to  changes  of  temperature, 
and  of  quick  recuperation  after  fatigue.  He 
needs  a  vigor  that  always  ''bids  not  sit  nor 
stand,  but  go."  It  was  this  inward  flame  of 
energy  that  made  so  fruitful  the  life  of  the 
elder  Garcia,  that  enabled  Maria  Garcia  to 
crowd  a  repertory  of  thirty-five  operas  into 
ten  years  on  the  stage,  and  that  gave  to 
Pauline  Garcia  and  to  the  younger  Manuel 
respectively  ninety  and  one  hundred  full,  ac- 
tive years.  Even  Sontag,  who  appeared  so 
frail,  had  an  unsuspected  supply  of  endur- 
ance to  draw  upon,  or  she  never  could  have 
kept  the  youthful  freshness  of  her  voice 
through  forty-five  years  of  use.  Operatic 
work  makes  such  great  drafts  on  the  strength 
of  the  singer  that  none  but  the  rugged  can 
hope  to  succeed  in  it,  and  this  is  quite 
as  true  to-day  as  it  was  in  the  days 
of  the  giant  Lablache  and  the  dynamic 
Garcias. 


124    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

The  question  of  health  brings  us  naturally 
to  that  of  self-denial,  the  power  to  eschew  all 
indulgences  and  pursuits  that  weaken  the  fiber 
of  the  body  and  divert  the  mind  from  the  main 
business  in  hand,  which  is  the  perfecting  of 
one's  art.  Art  is  a  jealous  mistress,  who 
can  be  wooed,  won  and  held  by  unswerving 
and  single-minded  devotion  only.  Self-denial 
means  character,  a  quality  not  often  enough 
credited  to  the  account  of  singers. 

The  popular  idea  is  that  life  behind  the 
operatic  scenes  is  looser  than  elsewhere.  This 
may  be  true  in  the  case  of  artists  not  of  the 
highest  standing,  but  is  not  true  of  the  very 
best.  Artists  live  in  history  mostly  by  their 
public  achievements  and  it  is,  therefore,  pos- 
sible that  in  the  private  lives  of  those  I  have 
been  writing  about  there  were  scandals.  The 
only  scandal  that  I  have  unearthed  is  that  of 
Malibran's  liaison  with  de  Beriot,  but  even 
this  irregularity  is  easily  condoned.  Mali- 
bran,  while  still  a  young  girl,  was  married, 
probably  against  her  will  and  certainly  under 
false  pretences,  to  a  man  more  than  twice  her 
age,  for  whom  she  never  could  have  had  any 
love  and  whose  conduct  soon  made  even  re- 
spect impossible.  A  few  years  later  she  met 
her  real  mate  in  de  Beriot,  whom  she  married 
formally  as  soon  as  the  courts  released  her 
from  the  earlier  tie.  No  shadow  of  scandal 
hangs  over  the  story  of  the  other  Garcias  and 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  12$ 

an  atmosphere  of  blissful  domesticity  per- 
vades such  records  as  remain  of  the  conjugal 
experiences  of  Grisi  and  Mario,  Lablache, 
Jenny  Lind,  Sontag  and  Catalani.  Of  the 
private  lives  of  the  others  little  is  known. 
Whether  it  was  chance,  expediency  or  moral 
principle  that  underlay  such  respectability  I 
cannot  say;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the 
entire  group  seems  to  have  maintained  a 
standard  of  private  conduct  that  would  be 
considered  exemplary  in  any  society. 

Opera  written  by  Italians  and  sung  by  sing- 
ers trained  according  to  the  Italian  traditions, 
even  when  they  were  not  Italian  by  birth, 
practically  monopolized  the  operatic  field  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
the  influence  of  Wagner,  Gounod  and  even 
Meyerbeer,  Rossini's  contemporary,  belongs  to 
the  latter  half.  The  best  singing  of  to-day  is 
derived  from  the  earlier  period  through  the 
medium  of  such  teachers  as  Manuel  Garcia,  Jr., 
Marchesi,  Stockhausen,  Lamperti,  delle  Sedie 
and  Vannucini,  who  in  their  turn  were  nurtured 
in  the  school  of  Sontag,  Rubini  and  Lablache. 
What  is  best  in  vocal  technique  we  owe,  there- 
fore, to  the  Italians  ;  to  the  French  we  owe  that 
part  of  technique  that  concerns  "I'art  de  bien 
dire" ;  to  the  Germans  we  owe  nothing.  Why 
such  bad  singing  should  come  from  Germany, 
the  most  profoundly  musical  of  all  nations,  is 
a  puzzling  question,  but  it  must  be  admitted 


126   SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

that  very  few  German  singers  ever  acquire 
the  art  of  bel  canto.  Sontag,  Lehmann  and 
Hempel  shine  as  brilliant  exceptions  from  this 
generalization. 

Unfortunately,  Italy  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury appears  to  have  forgotten  the  traditions 
of  its  noble  past.  The  operas  of  the  later 
Verdi,  Ponchielli  and  Mascagni  have  bred  too 
many  leather-lunged  singers,  who  are  at 
their  happiest  only  when  most  vociferous. 
Wagner,  too,  with  his  mighty  orchestra,  has 
invaded  the  musical  precincts  once  sacred  to 
the  dulcet  harmonies  of  Rossini  and  Bellini 
and  engendered  a  type  of  singer  who,  unmind- 
ful of  the  example  set  by  Lehmann  and  Jean 
de  Reszke,  believes  that  the  only  way  to  in- 
terpret Wagner's  music  is  to  shout  it.  The 
result  of  all  this  has  been  the  sacrifice  of 
vocal  control,  the  very  essence  of  bcl  canto 
for  the  sake  of  the  big  tone.  Even  Caruso,  the 
splendor  of  whose  voice  surpasses  anything 
heard  by  our  generation,  has  lost  quite  as 
much  as  he  has  gained  through  his  determina- 
tion to  acquire  the  big  tone.  The  acquisition 
is  now  complete  and  it  is  impossible  to  with- 
hold one's  admiration  from  the  clarion  tones 
that  ring  out  so  true  and  free,  but  to  many 
that  recall  the  fine  restraint  that  used  to  ren- 
der his  delivery  of  "Spirto  gentil"  and  "Una 
furtiva  Lagrima"  so  eloquent,  the  loss  in 
sweetness  outweighs  the  gain  in  power. 


SOME    CONCLUSIONS  12J 

But  we  need  not  despond  or  be  hopeless  for 
better  things  in  the  future.  Lord  Mount- 
Edgecumbe,  an  English  connaisseur  in  music, 
writing  ninety  years  ago,  wagged  his  head  as 
despairingly  over  the  noisy,  unmelodious, 
iconoclastic  operas  of  Rossini,  which  he  held 
to  be  a  sad  deterioration  from  the  pure  and 
noble  style  of  Sarti  and  Cimarosa,  as  the  crit- 
ics fifty  years  later  wagged  their  heads  over 
the  degenerate  Wagner.  With  his  and  many 
another  similar  example  before  us,  I,  for  one, 
shall  not  proclaim  that  the  true  art  of  singing 
has  come,  or  ever  will  come,  to  a  full  stop. 
The  success  of  John  McCormack,  the  Irish 
tenor,  whose  lovely  art,  which  embodies  the 
principles  of  bel  canto  as  they  were  practised 
by  Garcia,  Rubini  and  Mario,  appeals  to  the 
sophisticated  as  well  as  to  the  popular  taste, 
goes  to  prove  that  the  worship  of  the  big 
tone  has  not  exterminated  our  power  to  enjoy 
the  controlled  tone. 

The  art  of  singing  is  the  art  of  expressing 
the  emotions  musically  by  means  of  the  voice, 
and  the  voice  that  is  able  to  express  truth- 
fully through  its  tones  the  greatest  variety  of 
emotions  is  the  greatest  voice.  There  are  emo- 
tions that  require  for  their  expression  a  mel- 
low, restrained  tone ;  there  are  those  that  re- 
quire an  explosion  of  tone ;  and  there  are, 
besides  these,  countless  tone-qualities,  all  of 
which     enrich    the     capacity    of     the    voice 


128    SINGERS  OF  THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

for  emotional  expression.  Rubini  seems  to 
have  possessed  a  greater  capacity  for  such  ex- 
pression than  any  other  singer  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  The  greatest  singer  of  the 
twentieth  century  will  be  one  who,  a  master  of 
bel  canto  like  Rubini,  can  sound  all  the  notes 
within  the  scale  of  human  emotion. 


INSTRUCTION  BOOKS 

THE  VOICE 


Bates,  James,  VOICE  CULTURE  FOR  CHIL- 
DREN 

Part     I.  Instructions 75 

"      II.  Exercises  with  Pianoforte  Accpt.       .75 
"     III.  Appendix,     2-pt.     Studies,     with 

Accpt 30 

Broekhoven,  J.  van,  EXERCISES 

Book  1,  Elementary  Soprano  or  Tenor     .       .50 

"      2,  "  Alto 50 

"      3,  "  Bass 50 

"      4,  Advanced    Soprano   or  Tenor     .       .50 

"      5,  "  Alto 50 

"      6,  "  Bass 50 

Concone's  LESSONS.     New  Edition 

50  Lessons   for  the   Medium  part  of  the 

Voice 75 

25  Lessons.    A  sequel  to  the  above     .     .       .75 
15  Vocalises.     A  sequel  to  the  above   25 

Lessons 75 

15  Vocalises     for     Contralto    or    Mezzo- 

Soprano 75 

40  Lessons  for  Contralto 75 

40  Lessons  for  Bass  or  Baritone     ...       .75 
Hall,   Walter   Henry,   THE   ESSENTIALS    OF 
CHOIR  BOY  TRAINING 

Cloth 1  -oo 

Henschel,  G.,  PROGRESSIVE  STUDIES  FOR 
THE  VOICE,   with  Pianoforte  Accompani- 
ment.    In  two  parts. 
Part    I.  Studies  in  Sustained  Singing. 
Part  II.  Studies  in  Florid  Singing. 

Part     I,  High  Voice 1.25 

Medium  Voice 1.25 

"           Low  Voice 1.25 

Part  II,  High  Voice 1.25 

Medium  Voice 1.25 

Low  Voice 1.25 

Higgs,  James,  A  COLLECTION  OF  TWO- 
PART  SOLFEGGI  IN  THE  PRINCIPAL 
MAJOR  KEYS 

(Novello's  Music  Primers  No.  51)      .      .  .50 


Howard,  F.  E.,  CHILD  VOICE  IN  SINGING, 
THE 

Cloth -75 

Howard,  F.  E.,  HANDBOOK  ON  THE  TRAIN- 
ING OF  THE  CHILD  VOICE  IN  SING- 
ING        35 

Hulbert,    H.    H.,    BREATHING    FOR    VOICE 
PRODUCTION 
(Novello's  Music  Primers  No.  63)       .      .       .75 
Mann,  Richard,  A  MANUAL  OF  SINGING  FOR 
THE  USE   OF   CHOIR  TRAINERS  AND 
SCHOOLMASTERS 
New  edition  with  additions  by  J.  Stainer       .50 
Martin,     G.    C,    THE    ART     OF    TRAINING 
CHOIR  BOYS 
(Novello's  Music  Primers  No.  39)      •      •     i-5n 
Martin,    G.    C,    THE    ART     OF    TRAINING 
CHOIR  BOYS  (The  Exercises  Only) 
For  the   use  of  boys.      (Novello's    Music 

Primers  No.  39a) 5<> 

McNaught,  W.  G.,  SIGHT-SINGING  STUDIES 
STAFF  NOTATION 
(Movable  Dob.)     3  Books,  each     .      .  .15 

Randegger,  Alberto,  SINGING 

(Novello's  Music  Primers  No.  5)    .      .      .     1.50 
Stainer,  J.,   CHORAL    SOCIETY   VOCALIZA- 
TION 
Instructions  and  Exercises  in  Voice  Train- 
ing.   (Novello's  Music  Primers  No.  50)     1.00 

Or,  in   four  parts,  each 25 

Stainer,    J.,  THE    EXERCISES     IN    THE 

"CHORAL    SOCIETY    VOCALIZATION" 
PRIMER 
Adapted    and    arranged    for    the    use    of 
choirs  and  classes  of  female  voices,  by 
Arthur  W.  Marchant.    (Novello's  Music 

Primers  No.  50a) 75 

Stubbs,    G.     Edward,    HOW    TO    SING    THE 

CHORAL  SERVICE 

A  Manual  of  Intoning  for  clergymen     .     1.00 

Stubbs,   G.    Edward,  PRACTICAL   HINTS   ON 

THE  TRAINING  OF  CHOIR  BOYS 

With  an  introduction  by  the  Rev.  J.  S.  B. 

Hodges,   D.D 75 

Stubbs,  G.  Edward,  THE  ADULT  MALE  ALTO, 
OR  COUNTER-TENOR  VOICE  .75 


The  PSYCHOLOGY  of  SINGING 

A  Rational  Method  of  Voice  Cul- 
ture based  on  a  Scientific  Analysis 
of  all  Systems,  Ancient  and  Modern 

BY 

DAVID  C.  TAYLOR 
Cloth.      Price  $  1 .50  net.      By  mail  $  1 .62 


Richard  Aldrich  in  the  New  York  Times 

Mr.  Taylor  has  produced  here  a  remarkable  book, 
that  deserves  to  be  pondered  by  everybody  who  is 
concerned  with  singing,  either  as  a  student  or  as  a 
teacher.  He  has  acquaintance  with  the  most  im- 
portant of  modern  theories,  and  he  examines  them 
with  thoroughness  and  merciless  logic.  The  result 
leaves  little  for  their  support.  Mr.  Taylor's  book  is 
daring ;  it  might  almost  be  called  revolutionary.  He 
has  presented  his  line  of  argument  with  much  skill, 
clearly  and  in  a  manner  to  carry  conviction. 

W.  J.  Henderson  in  the  New  York  Sun 

In  his  "Psychology  of  Singing"  David  C.  Taylor 
has  made  a  book  that  teachers  of  singing  will  have 
to  read  whether  they  like  it  or  not.  He  has  examined 
the  basis  of  that  modern  method  of  teaching  singing 
which  attempts  to  instruct  pupils  in  the  intelligent 
operation  of  the  muscles  of  their  vocal  mechanism 
and  has  pronounced  it  utterly  and  fundamentally 
vicious. 

It  would  do  many  opera  singers  good  if  they 
would  take  to  heart  Mr.  Taylor's  thoughts  on  the 
office  of  the  aesthetic  powers  in  conceiving  the 
beautiful  tone. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  original  and  stimulating  books 
ever  written  on  the  art  of  singing,  and  it  ought  to 
do  a  world  of  good. 

The  H.  W.  GRAY  COMPANY 
2  West  45th  St.,        -        -         New  York 

SOLE  AGENTS  FOR 

NOVELLO  &  CO.  LTD, 


JUST  PUBLISHED 

Self  Help  for  Singers 

A  Manual  for  Self  Instruction  in 

Voice  Culture  based  on  the 

Old  Italian  Method. 

A  sequel  to  The  Psychology  of  Singing 

By 
DAVID  TAYLOR 


Cloth  Price  One  Dollar 


The  "Psychology  of  Singing"  established  the 
principle  of  imitation  as  the  sole  basis  of  the  old 
Italian  method.  "Self  Help"  is  a  simple  com- 
prehensive system  of  voice  culture  by  imitation 
arranged  for  the  student's  use  in  self  instruction. 

THE  H.  W.  GRAY  CO. 

2  West  45th  Street,  New  York 

Sole  Agents  for 

NOVELLO  &  CO.,  LTD. 


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